Love is all you need: married

One of the perks of being married is that I’m no longer wracked with the burden of analyzing the minutiae of every social interaction with the opposite sex: no more “was that a sign? Did my hair look right? Should I text her now or wait a few days? Am I coming off as desperate? Did I totally screw this up?!”

This means that Valentine’s Day— which our society annoyingly upholds as a minefield of potential dating faux pas—is no longer a daunting mountain that I must climb to prove my worth as a viable dating prospect, but rather functions simply as a nice reminder to do something sweet for my wife.

I wish I had that same outlook when I was single. It’s so easy to get caught up in the social pressures of what this arbitrary, money-fueled, commercialized non-holiday is “supposed” to mean, but that doesn’t need to be the case. It can be a good day or a bad day, just like any other. But it’s just a day.