Live and Let Love

It’s Valentine’s Day and social media is a-flutter with its lovers and haters.

I fall somewhere in between and I believe Valentine’s Day is very much a subjective occasion.

When I was young, in my late teenage/twenties, Valentine’s Day was huge. The thought of not getting a card was enough to spiral me into a Bridget Jones type angst. Cards, flowers, dinner, great sex – all of this mattered. Back then.

Now, nearly 42 and after 11 years of marriage, I am resigned to the fact that I have no secret admirers, nor am I likely to acquire any on the way. I was forewarned by my husband that ‘I haven’t got you anything’ and, to his word, he didn’t. It doesn’t bother me a lot, but it does bother me a little. Like many others, I don’t need a special day to tell me I am loved and I don’t buy into the commercialism, but if you go back to the origins of Valentine’s Day, it is about a man who was willing to die in order to facilitate love. And that’s pretty special. He should be remembered and love should be celebrated. With all the tragedy that permeates our news headlines, I kinda like the fact we make such a fuss about something which is, at the end of the day, a positive thing. Lovely, in fact.

I also get the Valentine haters. Perhaps those who are not loved, who are in abusive relationships, who are lonely, whose experience of love is a wholly negative experience. Those who have loved, and lost.

It’s the people who ‘don’t give a damn about Valentine’s Day’ but actually do, that bother me. The not caring but quite willing to vociferously slap their damning opinions in the faces of those who are either trying to have a nice day or are trying to ignore everything heart-shaped. If you want nothing to do with it, then kindly bugger off.

Live and let love. That’s what I think, anyway.