A lesson in love

So today is Valentine's Day. Or, as my husband and I call it (because we purposely mispronounce words all the time.... I hope my daughter doesn't grow up stupid), Balentime's day. There seem to be two camps on this day every year since I can remember: for or against. Love is great or love stinks. Happy couples or bitter single people who feel like the world is out to get them for being single. I have always kind of been in the middle. I think love is wonderful, but I also know how shitty it feels to be single, not wanting to be, and having to see everyone around you going on dates and getting chocolates and whatever just because it's February 14th. Personally, I've never really understood what the big deal is either way.

I mean sure, my junior high boyfriend and I proclaimed our "anniversary" to be on Valentine's day, and if I happened to have a boyfriend at that time later in life it was always nice to get a card or a present or something. But otherwise I don't get it. Why is it so important on this ONE day of the year to feel like your significant other loves you? What about all the other days? I don't think forced frivolities or guilt-ridden gifting is especially meaningful. But I also don't understand why people feel like they need to crawl into a hole and die just because they're single.

A friend of mine always tells me how lucky I am to be married. And she's right, I am lucky, but not for the reason she thinks. She said I'm lucky to be married because I can stop looking for the right guy and that I always have someone there for me. That's true. She also mentioned how it must be nice to never have to worry about someone asking me out for a date or getting me a birthday gift or a Christmas gift and that I'll always have something special for Valentine's day. Uh.... well... in theory.

Let me preface this by saying that my husband is a wonderful, wonderful man. He works his ass off to provide for our family. He always listens to my bitching, and when I'm feeling depressed he lets me cry on his chest until I calm down, and he never judges me for it. He tells me every single day that I'm beautiful (even though I'm like 75 pounds heavier than when we started dating and usually only get to shower two or three times a week since Clara was born) and how much he appreciates me. He is a great husband. But he doesn't give a shit about holidays. And that's ok, because I love them enough for the both of us. However, I've never gotten a birthday, Christmas, anniversary or Valentine's gift in the nearly 5 years we've been together. He has financially supported me through pretty much that entire time, and he's always generous in every day life (with me AND my family... pretty much everything I've ever asked for he's gotten me at some point), so a present on a holiday doesn't really mean anything to me, so it's no big deal. But my point is that marriage doesn't automatically make Valentine's day more magical.


The myth:
A husband will send his wife a beautiful bouquet of flowers. He will have picked out some lavish gift, probably jewelry, and planned an elaborate scheme for her to discover it, like having it tied to the dog's collar and having the dog deliver it to her feet. He will take her out for an expensive and romantic dinner where they will hold hands, gaze into each other's eyes and, after sharing a dessert sprinkled with edible gold dust, go home and have crazy passionate sex featuring a special lingerie number the wife picked out, because that's her gift to her husband.

My truth:
A wife will spend the day taking care of a sick baby who not once, not twice, but three times had poop diapers that leaked into the wife's lap. Her husband comes home bearing a box of Girl Scout cookies he bought from the daughter of a guy he works with. Thin Mint, of course. He kisses the wife on the cheek and then takes over baby duties from the wife. She then cooks a half-assed dinner of steak and zucchini, does a half-assed cleaning job and starts a half-assed load of laundry. The couple then argues about who will change the latest poopy diaper. The wife wins. The husband goes to bed. The wife stays up with the baby until the baby falls asleep. Then she watches "Dance Moms" while eating Thin Mints and drinking coconut milk, trying to figure out what the big deal is about this holiday.

I think a friend of mine really put it best:

 "I just want to say that although I love the gift of flowers and See's candy, I'm even more thankful that each day my husband gives me the gift of not being a douchebag. You can't buy that at the mall."

Ah, young love

I was friends with this kid in 6th grade who was a "skater", a rollerblader to be exact (a distinction that would later become vital to social standing). He was cute and funny, shorter than me and a little crude, which is probably why I was so drawn to him. I considered myself a good kid, I never got detention or turned my homework in late or anything like that. So hanging out with this short, quirky boy was fun, especially when I was able to shock him by cursing or by trying rollerblading tricks. We were really good friends and hung out and talked on the phone almost every day after school and during the summer. One day he asked me a supposedly hypothetical question that would turn out to be one of the first of what I considered romantic sentiments in my life.

"So, what would you do if you really liked a girl and she was really awesome to hang out with, but she was pretty much a total dog? And what if all your friends said it didn't matter and that you should just go for it but that you just couldn't get over how much of a dog she was?"

I was no fool. I knew that he didn't hang out with any other girls as much as he hung out with me, so I was pretty certain that he was talking about me. I had harbored a crush on him for the entire school year, so I pushed aside my emotions and tried to ignore how stung I was that he thought I was ugly.

"Well," I said, "I would go for it. If you get along with someone it shouldn't matter if they're a dog or not. For example, I like you a lot, even though you're so short."

Ok, so perhaps I didn't manage to push aside ALL my emotions.

I don't remember exactly how he responded, but we kept being friends and he never asked me out so I imagine he wasn't flattered at my pointing out his height deficiency. However, the point of this memory is that I was actually flattered that a good looking boy was considering asking me out even though he thought I was ugly. It didn't occur to me to be angry or hurt, I just accepted his appraisal of me and that was that.


Yes, he may have called me ugly directly to my face, but it seemed like such a nice thing at the time that a 12 year old boy would consider dating someone who wasn't pretty. At that time in life (and ever after, I would come to find out) boys just went for the cutest girls with the prettiest hair or the biggest boobs and "dated" for a week before breaking up and finding a new crush. So to my line of thinking, it was touching that he was actually attracted to my personality.

And, for the sake of posterity, I wasn't even really a dog, I just had glasses that were too big for my face and I didn't understand how to dress to accommodate my changing body. This was proved to me when, later that year, I got contact lenses and started wearing tighter shirts and got asked out by three boys in one week, two of whom later got into a fist fight at a roller-rink over who got to hold my hand in the couples' skate.

Is it any wonder that we are all so screwed up regarding relationships and self-esteem?