Tainted love

Welcome to the most anticipated, dreaded, loved, feared and cherished day of the year. Call it Valentine’s Day, Singles Awareness Day, a “Hallmark Holiday” or simply Feb. 14, but everyone has an opinion about this blessed or cursed day.\nI believe our cultural ambivalence over Valentine’s Day results from our tendency to idealize relationships. We dream of perfect unions that meet all expectations and have no problems. We idealize love into an all-or-nothing affair, then we get frustrated when life doesn’t resemble the models we see in movies, music and Hallmark cards. Here’s how the cycle of love works (win a prize for naming every song and artist):\nIn new relationships, we see “a whole new world” from “a new fantastic point of view” with “no one to tell us ‘no’ or where to go, or say we’re only dreaming.” We celebrate the perfect person who became “my strength when I was weak,” “my voice when I couldn’t speak” and “my eyes when I couldn’t see,” the person who made me “everything I am, because you loved me.”\nIn moments of passion we excitedly suggest, “Let’s talk about sex” or “Voulez vous coucher avec moi ce soir?” Maybe we even get a little kinky: “I’m a slave 4 U.”\nIn moments of bliss, we swear, “I wanna love you forever ... 10,000 lifetimes together.” You’ll “always be my baby.” “This I promise you.”\nThen we fall short of perfection. We get “shot through the heart” and those we love are to blame – “You give love a bad name!” When love falls short of idealized standards (it always does) we quickly ask, “Will someone please call a surgeon who can crack my ribs and repair this broken heart?” “I loved you endlessly,” we lament, but “now it’s time to leave and make it alone ... Baby, bye, bye, bye!”\nWe remind ourselves, “I will survive!” “I’m a survivor. I’m not gonna give up. I’m not gonna stop, I’m gonna work harder.” But soon, we fall into the pits of despair, crying “All by myself! ... Don’t wanna be all by myself anymore!” So we once again wish, “Dreamlover come rescue me ... I need you so desperately.”\nI’ve been all over this cycle in my life. When I played straight in 5th grade, I made a Valentine’s bracelet for a girl who wasn’t my girlfriend. I got payback when my eighth-grade girlfriend got back together with her ex-boyfriend at the Valentine’s dance. More recently, I spent 10 years of Valentine’s Days wishing for a relationship with my now ex-boyfriend to work out. Unfortunately, dreaming of perfection distracted me from the hard work of making a relationship work.\nNow I’m lucky to be in a relationship with a man who graciously deals with my imperfections and baggage. We don’t strive for “perfection.” Instead, we work well together through bumps in life.\nThe perfect-to-tumultuous romance of love songs makes good music. But for me, embracing the imperfections of love makes this an “ideal” Valentine’s Day.