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Ahhh, there's nothing like a forced Hallmark holiday to dredge up memories of failed past relationships, put unnecessary pressure on current relationships, and cause melancholy for those who happen to be unattached on February 14. I've been a casualty of Valentine's Day in each of these ways, and I'm sure you have as well.
Let's start with dredging up memories of failed past relationships, shall we? Easy enough for me, especially since I just got off the phone with one of them - Only Child. As cheezy as it is, our "anniversary" (the day we made our relationship officially exclusive by half-jokingly drafting up a relationship contract) is on Valentine's Day. Let's see, if we were still together, it would be our 8th year.
Our tradition was to "renegotiate" our contract. We even had a draft tacked up on the bulletin board when we lived together. The idea was that we would review it each anniversary, revise it as we saw fit, and then reaffirm our commitment by signing the document and pledging another year. It was all a joke of course, but deep down, we all know there is some truth in everything - especially for women. This was as close as I could get to an "official commitment" from Only Child and I tried to pretend it meant something. But it didn't (and neither did the marriage proposal, setting a wedding date, buying a dress and putting a deposit on a reception hall). Now he and I are friends who can laugh about our busted relationship and wish each other a happy V-day with our significant others. But that took a few years.
The worst part of Valentine's Day is, of course, the ridiculous amount of pressure the holiday puts on current relationships - new and well established. When I was younger, I resented the hell out of the day. Probably because I was deeply entrenched in my Unavailable Dirtbag phase. This consisted of dating guys I liked to describe as "blank walls"; they were pretty much there for me to project my own emotions onto - otherwise they contributed virtually nothing to the relationship -- and I liked it that way. Let's just say I wasn't all that emotionally healthy back then.
But this phase of mine makes for some entertaining Valentine's memories, particularly when I think back to my Senior year in college fling with Allman (named for his hairy resemblance to Greg Allman - long blonde hair, pork chop sideburns and a goatee. I know it sounds gross, but this was the height of the grunge era and he was actually quite handsome under all that hair). Allman was a big time stoner. He was so "laid back" that sometimes you wondered if he was there at all. But I had unusual access to him that no one else did (or so I liked to think) so it felt "special" to me. He was actually quite sweet, a talented musician (though too shy to play in front of others), peaceful (always walked away from a fight - which I loved), and very smart (this was an Ivy League school after all, and they don't give stoner scholarships).
But our "relationship" was a joke. As nice as we both were, neither of us was in any place to be building any sincere connection. Try as I might to get him to "talk" about how he felt about us, I was always a little relieved deep down when he successfully danced around the issue. Instead we just "hung out" (a legitimate relationship status that seemed to only exist during college - am I right?). His frat house window was across the street from my dorm and we would talk on the phone every day while leaning out of our windows and making distant eye contact across 112th street. We met up at the bars, smoked up in his loft, and generally avoided anything more serious.
And then came Valentine's Day 1994. By this point I had given up on trying to establish something official with Allman. But when V-day comes around, you can't help but face all those annoying questions again. I'd never had a boyfriend on Valentine's Day and had no idea what to expect if I did - let alone with a guy that didn't even fit into any proper "boyfriend" category.
So instead of talking about it, making plans, or even agreeing not to make a plan at all, guess what we did? We completely ignored it as if the day did
