V-Day Remixed – Cliché for a Day

Hi there, I’m Maggie O’Connor at Breakthrough MFT helping you reach your breakthrough moment.

So in our “It’s Cliche for a reason” series, lets talk about a huge cliche’d holiday – you know what I’m going to say – I’m wearing the shirt with the hearts on it – YUP. It’s Valentine’s Day.

As a relationship therapist, I totally empathize up and down that we all have very real, and sometimes very painful reasons why we can’t express our feelings. But today I’m going to go at it from a different angle, and tell you something personal.

I hate Valentine’s Day.

I hate it because it makes this one day fraught with expectations and pressure to deliver the thing that will represent the “right” thing to your partner that somehow makes up for the other 364…

Don’t believe me? Go to any V-Day card rack and pull a card at random. 80% chance it says something like “Sorry I’m such a jerk/won’t be affectionate with you. I really love you. Here’s a card.” Maybe the card comes with a present. Maybe it’s the “right” present. But I don’t like that it comes with all the pressure of one day. 

I’m reminded of the Celtic tradition of handfasting, in which a couple were bound together in a public ceremony involving a  ribbon or a cord tied around their hands, and would come back together after a year and a day to decide whether they wanted to be married.

So what if we used this V-day to give your relationship the BEST gift ever… a true assessment.

If you’re about to press the “Close” button, don’t! It means something feels too scary about this, which means you need help to do it – take some time, maybe call a therapist to talk about what scares you about the state of your relationship.

For the rest of you who maybe leaned in or back a bit, here’s what we want to think about in our new VDay tradition.

What WORKS about your relationship? What do you like? What do you enjoy? What do you appreciate about your partner? WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU TOLD THEM?

What could use work about your relationship? What makes you feel disconnected or depleted, misunderstood, angry, frustrated? What makes you feel scared? Or sad? WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU TOLD THEM?

What is your wish or intent for your relationship in the next year?

What would you like to change about yourself in the relationship? What do you think you do well? What do you wish you did better?

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU WERE THOUGHTFUL ABOUT THIS?

What if we agreed to do this every V-Day, like in the hand fasting ceremony? That we’ll come together and talk about what’s happening in the relationship? And what if we agree that if there are problems we couldn’t solve, negative cycles we couldn’t get out of, we’d go get help before it becomes even more unmanageable? The thing I hear most often from couples is that they wish they’d come into therapy sooner. So give your relationship a check up. Compare notes. And give us a call if we can be helpful.

I’m Maggie O’Connor, wishing you a very connecting V-Day and hoping this helps you to break on through.