If you and your partner are open, stable, honest, in love and not looking for ‘the next best thing’ you’ll probably get through the holiday just fine. I know very few New York relationships that could be categorized under all these terms. In many ways, Manhattan’s an island of relationship losers. We know what we want (it’s just different Monday through Friday), we know how we feel (for the few hours after expensive weekly psychotherapy), and we believe in romance (when we’re not being spit on by people in the subway). Many New Yorkers prefer to indulge in what I like to call ‘grey relationships.’ Love stories that are exciting, non-committal, endlessly confusing, and allow us to be closet workaholics. Everything’s going along swimmingly until a calendar imposed nut-fest like Valentine’s Day forces you to snap out of the dysfunctional grayness you’ve been passively enjoying and dares you to define your relationship.
Definition very often equals death.
Let’s embark on a memory road trip to Valentine’s Day three years ago, a holiday that assassinated my extremely pleasurable grey relationship at the time. I’d been for the most part exclusively dating the object of my affection for eight or nine months. I’d been subtly pushing for weeks for us to take things to the next level (meeting parents, going on trips, engaging in activities together other than just eating, drinking, watching HBO, and sex) and decided to use Valentine’s Day as a test for him to prove he cared about me on a level beyond buying me beer and letting me keep stuff at his place.
My not-so-subtle hinting that he better do something nice for me for Valentine’s Day (or else) actually worked. He put down the cable remote control, did laundry, pulled himself together and made reservations at the nicest restaurant we’d ever been to. We actually connected over the meal. The night from start to finish went great. You’d think some sort of victory dance and ‘happily ever after’ scrawled across us in cursive would have ensued, but no. Us connecting and spending the holiday together sacred this guy shitless. It was too much, too fast. He disappeared, I stalked him, we exchanged stuff, and never spoke again.
Thanks, V Day.
Granted, we wanted different things from one another. Granted, I was being an immature crazy manipulator. Granted, he sucked. But our enjoyable, stress-free arrangement could have continued for many more months undisturbed had Valentine’s Day not forced us into defining exactly what we meant to each other – a stage, come to find out, neither of us was ready for.
Maybe I should look at V Day as my friend. Something that helps you define, dump, and move out of the dysfunctional realm onto something bigger and better, but the commercialism, pinkness, teddy bears and Duane Reade mega assortment of Sweet Tarts and cheap candy makes it impossible for me to do that.
My advice to any men in the grey area who aren’t sure what to do is to send flowers. I don’t think flowers force anyone to define anything, and flowers have NEVER made a romantic situation worse. They’re the one gift that can’t hurt, they can only help. Hell, if I had this powerful a placation tool I could send to the guys I’m dating, I’d have it in my calendar on autopilot.
Thursday’s D Day. So who has plans?
February 12th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
I have plans for Valentine’s Day. Get drunk. Probably by myself. All fellow relationship losers welcome to join me.
And I once did get in trouble for sending flowers. Grrrr. I’ll tell you the story sometime.
February 12th, 2008 at 7:54 pm
My advice? Host another one of your fabulous parties. Only the invitees MUST be single. No exceptions. Mingle, make out, booze it up and party the night away. I hosted 4 of them, and loved every minute of it.
February 12th, 2008 at 9:04 pm
i’ll be your valentine baby. will you be mine? i hate it too. we can go out and make fun of people wearing “valentine’s day is for suckers” t shirts
February 12th, 2008 at 9:07 pm
‘Tis very true– nothing worse than a forced “relationship defining moment”. I know a lot of people hum and haw a lot more about V-Day when they are in that limbo relationship category.
February 12th, 2008 at 11:52 pm
I’m a V-Day hater. Can’t bloody stand it.
Incidentally, I’ve had guys do the disappearing act on me at completely random times during the year, if that makes you feel any better. It had less to do with defining relationships and more to do with them being complete wankers.
Enjoy the day, whatever you get up to.
February 14th, 2008 at 1:27 am
Ah, to be young and in love!!!!
< /irony >
I’ve gotten to the point now where I don’t really have any feelings towards V Day. It almost feels passe to hate it vehemently, probably just because I’ve somehow managed to make myself single in time for V Day every single year since 8th grade. Even in my last “serious” relationship, I managed to get into a huge blowout fight with my boyfriend just in time for us to be “on a break” during the second week of February. I guess maybe since the last time I enjoyed it I was getting a teddy bear and $2 box of chocolate and was writing “CC+MD” in a heart on my Social Studies notebook and therefore have no REAL V Day celebrations to compare, it doesn’t really bother me as much.
Either way, I’ll be getting drunk and eating chocolate continuously tomorrow.
February 14th, 2008 at 5:32 am
wow i totall agree with this and i haven been screwed myself a few times, giving a guy i am in a grey relationship with something for V day…and then he goes running!
February 14th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
Let’s be honest you scared him by setting your expectations too high. It would have been better if instead of you wanting something out of the ordinary in order to show his affection for you that you instead asked him to buy you costume jewelry and a see through thong and have him pour his favorite alcoholic beverage over you so that he can have the night of his life and be willing to make every day your very own special holiday where he takes you to nice dinners all the time!
More at unadater.blogspot.com
February 14th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
the weather guy and i circled this one… we have that gray relationship as you know…
circle…circle..no one actually saying the two words.
finally, i said, “um, you don’t actually expect me do want anything for vday, do you? because i simply loathe that day.”
i think i’ve bought a few more moths of grayness.
word.
February 14th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
I *love* the grey relationship (GR) idea….but here is where you ran into problems: “a test for him to prove he cared about me on a level beyond buying me beer and letting me keep stuff at his place.”
There is always one person in the GR that needs to change it, and inevitably it ends badly.
I make sure to know where I stand in all relationships, and if I get confused, I consult this chart (which I highly recommend)
The Relational Chart