Is there any worse time to be a month into a relationship than February? Less time than that and you can both laugh it off as unimportant. I mean, you barely even know each other, amiright?! More time than that and you’ve already established some rhythms. You’re working more as a unit and you have some idea where this is going or if it’s gonna last.
Of course that completely discounts one very important fact about the relevant parties. Our birthdays are just under a year apart. 361 days, to be exact. What day is more important than your birthday? It’s far too early to know what the perfect birthday present might be. I stress out about that kind of thing enough with my friends and family, but this is much worse! Go too big or too wrong…
Do you know how hard it is to find a St. Valentine’s Day card that doesn’t have the word “love” written on it? I think I tore through the card section of at least three stores just to find the card that precisely expressed the not-insignificant, but not-too-overbearing degree of “love” I had for Tiffany. Snoopy and Woodstock saved my ass with their generally non-verbal exchanges.
All this pressure, but for what? Is it even worth talking about how unfair, arbitrary, and corporate St. Valentine’s Day is? I mean, the birthday thing, at least that’s somewhat meaningful, right?
Although you might not believe it based on the frequency of romantic failure mentioned on this site, I do actually know what I’m doing, so things went well through the entire month. We played it pretty cool by treating each other to birthday dinners and, for 14 Feb, a card, roses, and dinner. It felt right, but man was that an unfair way to start a relationship.
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