Last-minute Valentine’s Day guide for couples

If you’re in a romantic relationship and are subsequently stressing out about Valentine’s Day, take a deep breath and know everything is going to be okay.

Despite what the people in the RomCom Industrial Complex — that’s the sprawling factory where all romantic comedies are filmed, in case you didn’t know — want you to think, there’s really no reason to feel any pressure to “perform” on Valentine’s Day. Unless we’re talking about…you know…wink wink*

*(Unless you’re a surgeon heading a critical operation on Feb. 14. In which case, yeah, you better perform.)

See, people like to pretend Valentine’s Day is some make-it-or-break-it day in every relationship, that it’s a day where so little can go right and so much can go awry. People fear making a mistake, any mistake, on Valentine’s Day, but there’s no need to have such worries. Really, nothing can go wrong.

Consider the following scenarios:

1) You buy a thoughtless and tacky gift/organize a lame romantic evening: Big whoop. If you and your significant other are really Meant To Be, then one lousy Valentine’s Day shouldn’t be that much of an issue. Your relationship will probably face much greater trials and tribulations in the future  — for example, maybe you’ll forget your s.o. is allergic to shellfish and cook a shellfish dinner, and then, as you apologize for forgetting such a basic bit of partner-information, the entire house burns down because you left the stove on while going to make your apology — so losing sleep over a single Valentine’s Day gone wrong doesn’t make much sense.

Plus, do you really want to spend the rest of your life/afterlife with someone who freaks out over a corporatized holiday? No, you don’t. So, at worst, any errors on your part will be a litmus test for your s.o.’s reasonableness, a gauge to see how he or she will react (or overreact) to future difficulties.

(And yeah, you could probably avoid this entire scenario if you simply “communicate” and “talk about things” beforehand, both of you voicing your respective concerns and expectations regarding Valentine’s Day. But where’s the fun in that? Where’s the mystery? Also, those conversations can be difficult to have, if for no other reason than Hallmark doesn’t really make cards specific enough to be used as means of facilitating the necessary back-and-forth dialogue.)

2) Your s.o. buys a thoughtless and tacky gift/organizes a lame romantic evening: See above. (As in the first scenario listed above, not the opening to this post. But once you’ve re-read it, the first scenario, skip over reading this scenario so as not to be caught in an endless loop of reading and re-reading the opening two scenarios. It can be tricky, I know.)

3) You both have a wonderful time: Congratulations! See, weren’t all those worries unfounded? Now go celebrate by [insert your double-entendre — category: sex — of choice here].

4) You both have a horrible time and realize your relationship has deteriorated past the point of repair, the fire that once burned so, so hot between the two of you reduced to only burning so-so hot: Congratulations! You’ve confronted an issue that you probably should have confronted months ago! Now you’re out of that relationship that was making you miserable. Go celebrate by [insert your double-entendre — category: onanism — of choice here].

5) You both die because the box of what you thought were chocolates ends up being a box full of ill-tempered spiders: Sorry. That’s actually a pretty shitty Valentine’s Day.

As you can see, science has proven there’s no reason to be worried about Valentine’s Day if you’re in a relationship. So relax and stop twisting yourself into knots over all the little things that could potentially go wrong.

Except for the spider thing. I’d be worried about that if I were you.