I don't know if you'd noticed, but today is Valentine's Day. Congratulations if you were unaware of this, you may have been living on Mars or under a rock (I hope the former because Mars is way cooler than a rock). Yes today is our societal approved capitalist wankfest in celebration of one particular expression of romantic love. But I hear you cry, "why are you so disdainful of this holiday? You have a romantic partner, surely today is all cuddles and kittens".
It is true enough that I have a romantic partner and that means today is all about him and me and snuggles and stuff. Except that its not. It is about parting people from their hard earned money so they can make a big show of how much they supposedly love their partner. When, you know, money and love shouldn't have anything to do with each other and if you're only showing your partner you love them once a year, you are doing it so very wrong.
This is the fifth concurrent year that Sam and I have been together for Valentine's day. And yet, I am still in a position where I have been single for more Valentine's days than I have had a partner. And one of the Valentine's days spent with someone was so horrifically disappointing its a wonder I didn't become a nun. So I am still kind of suffering from the social conditioning that Valentine's day must be perfect or you don't love that person enough. But I am also coming to realise after five years with the same person, five iterations of Valentine's day in this relationship, that it's all a bunch of crap. And the socially conditioned view of romance is also crap. I'm still in an in between phase, realising that today has no intrinsic meaning, but not quite able to let go of the idea we have to mark it. Perhaps one day I'll be able to wake up on February 14th and honestly not give a shit about the cuddly toys and plastic hearts. But today is not yet that day.
So we will be celebrating Valentine's day with some traditionally romantic gestures. Yes, we will be eating dinner at a restaurant. But that's partly about marking the passage of time; we're eating at the same restaurant we went to for our first Valentine's day together. Yes, I got Sam a heart. Sort of. [EDIT: link appears to be dead, so here's a picture]. But in return he got me a meat thermometer, because I've been wanting one, and the promise of a decent slab of beef to go with it. And we actually exchanged gifts before today, because the day itself is not intrinsically special. There is nothing intrinsically special about V-day and all it's trapping. Thought I do believe there is something special about mine and Sam's relationship.
That said, my relationship with Sam isn't special because he buys me flowers and we stare into each other's eyes over a candlelit dinner. Neither of which happens all that often. As Girl on the Net said, love is in the mundane. My relationship with Sam is special because he trusts me with a sharp implement on his face; because he doesn't mind when I walk around the house with my wobbly bits out; because he is willing to put up with my heinous farts. That's what is special about our relationship, because we only have those things with each other. But it doesn't sound romantic, right? Well, in my experience love and romance often have very little to do with each other.
It is going to be incredibly difficult to spend the rest of your life with a person based on romantic gestures like flowers and chocolates and sensual massages. The real foundations for sharing your life with another person are decidedly unromantic. It's all about putting up with each others' idiosyncrasies, sorting out who does the dishes without murdering each other and being able to laugh at each others, especially if you fart at an inopportune moment.
While we're on the subject of love and squishy things, I read this yesterday. Apparently, according to some researcher or other, online relationships aren't' "real" relationships. I take issue with this on a non-romantic level. I have many friends that I know solely in an online capacity. And you know what? Some of them are better friends than those who are ostensibly my "real" friends. When I'm felling shitty, I've had more support from people I've never met in Australia that I have had from friends I grew up with. So I take issue with the idea that online friendships aren't "real"; I take issue at the divide between online life and "real" life.
And yes, the internet did play a vital role in Sam and I getting together. While we met in real life first, social media was where everything took off. We "poked" each other on Facebook, which led to using the "Superpoke" app to broaden out to "holding hands". When we exhausted the capabilities of that app, we moved on to "sexy" poking each other. This led to Facebook messaging, which led to talking on MSN for hours at a time. This all culminated in a highly orchestrated drinking "competition" which we knew Sam was going to lose and was a thinly veiled pretext for kisses without awkwardness. Except Sam ruined all of the careful planning by asking me out before the date of the drinking competition and by kissing me before the appointed time.
And yes, he asked me out online. Which actually led to a hilarious incident that wouldn't have happened offline. Literally seconds after he'd asked me on a date, my computer crashed. While I was frantically trying to reset my computer he was thinking I'd signed out of the messenger in disgust at being asked out by him. Thankfully, my computer rebooted alright, I signed back in and accepted his offer of a date. The rest, as they say is history.
Were it not for these interactions, the start of our relationship would have been significantly delayed, if it had ever happened at all. If we had gotten together anyway, it's possible we wouldn't have lasted as long as we had without that no pressure period of communication that allowed us to get to know each other pretty well before we started anything. So please don't dismiss relationships formed online as somehow "less" or not "real".
Because the farts Sam has to put up with are very definitely real, and are a much better measure of love than any number of bouquets of flowers.
