The Long View: 25 years of exchanging loving words

I remember the excitement of Valentine’s Day when I was a teenager. Cards coming in the post from boyfriends and secret admirers. One year I got a card nearly half the size of me; another year someone slipped a hand-drawn card into my school locker (lovely, except the drawing was an anatomically correct heart, complete with all the veins and arteries).

My husband and I were never big on Valentine’s Day, even in the early days of our relationship. We marked it, mainly with cards. We went for dinner once, but the tables were packed so tightly togethe, that even the novelty heart-shaped pizza didn’t make up for the lack of privacy.

We gave it another go the following year, naively thinking we could just walk into a restaurant on Valentine’s Day and get a table. Of course this was folly, and so we ended up wandering around, looking for somewhere, anywhere, we could get something to eat. Cut to us a half hour later eating battered sausages in our parked car.

And so, we stuck with cards.

The next year we decided to make our own cards, in protest against how commercial the day had become. This is where I tell you that my husband is an artist and graphic designer. My card for him, lovingly created with coloured paper and lots of glitter, looked downright childlike in comparison to his professional-level ‘handmade’ card. My husband is a perfectionist, and I am very much not. That’s not to say I don’t like things to be perfect. I just don’t mind if they’re not. When confronted with his superior card-making skills, though, I felt slightly embarrassed.

We went back to store-bought cards.

For someone who doesn’t necessarily express his feelings verbally, my husband is exceptionally good at writing how he feels in a card. Every year I would look forward to his card, where he would pen the most beautiful poem or simple words to tell me how he felt about me. Don’t get me wrong, I have always known how much he loves me and felt secure in that, but there is something lovely about seeing it written down.

Now that we’ve been together for 25 years, Valentine’s Day tends to come and go. We still mark it with cards, and my husband still writes his lovely words, but, truth be told, I wouldn’t be surprised if one year we completely forgot about it.

When we hit the 20-year wedding anniversary last year it got me thinking about familiarity in a relationship. You tend to settle into this comfortable routine, like sinking into a cosy sofa. It’s snug, warm and safe, but it’s not really lighting your world on fire.

It takes a conscious effort to relinquish the comfort of that sofa. But do you really need to? Is it not OK to relish the security of that familiarity? To enjoy the rewards of all the groundwork you’ve put into your relationship over the years to get to this point? Or, should you rage against the comfort?

Perhaps Valentine’s Day isn’t the day for this question, or maybe, on the other hand, it’s the perfect day for it.

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