Happy Valentine’s Day, love and romance, how to make it have real meaning
Published in Blog by Honor Rhodes, OBE on February 3rd 2023
Honor Rhodes, relationship, families and children’s welfare practitioner, is experienced in supporting couples and families. Here she sets out some of the challenges many couples and families are facing right now, the kind of support they need and how some romance can help.
It’s a day flooded with roses, confectionary, cards and grand gestures; it’s a day to say, “I love you” or even, “I adore you”. It’s a day to write a message in the sky, or on the side of a bus, a day to show the world we love and are loved in return.
This is all romance, and very powerful and exciting it is too, but it isn’t quite the same as love. For most of us romance burns briefly, like a bright flame. Love, on the other hand, is more like a beam of light, it can flicker and fade at points and it needs our care and attention.
There is a weight of Valentine’s expectation placed on our shoulders, from the minute the last mince pie disappears in the supermarket in early January we are reminded that the Valentine’s season is coming up fast. It is possible to buy everything material that might be needed, a card with a romantic message, some roses and heart shaped chocolate; an orgy of pink, ribbons and sweetness.
But, is love really to be expressed so openly on only one day of the year? Will that really do? Is that enough to sustain us? The answer for most people is no.
But, is love really to be expressed so openly on only one day of the year? Will that really do? Is that enough to sustain us? The answer for most people is no. We need our partners, husbands and wives to show us how they love us often, and in ways that we recognise as love. And, they need the same from us.
All this is that bit harder at the moment as we struggle with financial pressure and our post-pandemic lives. We are also living with the pressures of lives lived on Instagram and TikTok, our romantic gestures captured and curated, shared and compared.
Perhaps if we stripped it all back and thought about what our relationship means, why we have them and what sustains loving relationships we might find another way.
Perhaps if we stripped it all back and thought about what our relationship means, why we have them and what sustains loving relationships we might find another way.
We have relationships with our partners to be known by someone else and to know them in a way that is not possible with friends and our families. When relationships are healthy they allow us to rise to challenges, safeguard our physical and mental health, they offer us support and encouragement when we are hurt by others, or disappointed.
We will have experienced the strain and distress when our relationships are troubled too, when our partners feel far away from us, are unfaithful, drink too much or cannot or do not support us when we need them, and we can also feel the shame and panic of failing our partners too.
Valentine's Day therapy
On Tuesday 14 February this year Tavistock Relationships therapists and counsellors will be hard at work. They will be listening to couples who have fallen out of step with each other, have damaged their relationship with drunken rages, betting, affairs and other hurts. The therapist will be listening intently and thinking about how to help each person understand themselves and each other better so that they can find a way forward. For some they will stay together and, for others, they will decide to part.
... our partner relationships need to be looked after, like a garden, weeded and pruned all year round.
A personal challenge
So, Valentine’s Day? What does your partner really love you to do for them? Tea in bed? Hot sex? Clearing out a cupboard? A hand drawn card or the supermarket roses? You know them better than anyone, so trust your judgement.
But to make it different this year – and a personal challenge – find a way to do these acts of love every day, small acts of kindness to show you are holding that person in your mind, thinking about what would help them with their busy days and many pressures.
Professional support can help
And, if it is hard for you both at the moment, make Valentine’s Day the day you find some help from our therapists and counsellors. Tavistock Relationships was created as the NHS dawned, to offer help to couples. We see thousands of people a year and everyone’s story is different, whether they tell it to us in one of our quiet rooms in the City of London or via Zoom from their living rooms. We make no judgements and tell no tales, and we really can help.
A happy Valentine’s Day to you then, look out, your partner has read this too, “Tea in bed? Why thank you and I love you so much too, today and everyday.”
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© 2023 Tavistock Relationships. All Rights Reserved.
10 New Street, London, UK, EC2M 4TP - Tel: 020 7380 1975
Registered Charity Number: 211058. Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology.
Company number: 241618.
© 2023 Tavistock Relationships. All Rights Reserved.
10 New Street, London EC2M 4TP
Tel: 020 7380 1975
Registered Charity Number: 211058. Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology. Company number: 241618.