Valentine’s Day…a day created to make men feel like idiots and women feel superior when their men inevitably get the gifts wrong. I do not understand the need many couple’s feel to best their partner. What is the matter with people? Can they not just be happy to be with the one that loves them?

The media perpetrates this imbecilic behavior to the most extreme. I remember seeing one commercial in which the woman was opening a present and upon seeing a plug and she gets angry but then at the bottom of the box was some predictable piece of jewelry. Of course the woman’s eyes light up and all is well. Oh, let’s not forget the ongoing advertising campaign of Kay’s Jewelers: “every kiss begins with Kay’s.” Really…every kiss must begin with a piece of overpriced jewelry and won’t come from genuine emotion?

Probably the most absurd thing that I’ve heard lately was a “family moment” on my favorite radio station. This stated that a marriage cannot be based on emotion because emotion fades. This message stated that a marriage must be based on mutual respect and friendship. What?!! Are you kidding me? I get that a couple needs to have similar interests and similar way of viewing the world, but to not consider emotion in your choice of a lifelong partner is subjecting yourself to a life of mediocrity. I know this because before my choice of a love more powerful than background and culture I made a choice that made ‘sense.’ We were of the same education, same faith, same upbringing, and we almost died of boredom and misery. If we had stayed together our son would have never understood that love between two people is not one born out of duty but of what one person’s soul says to another.

This Valentine’s Day try to forget the “suppose to” and the “should” remember the “want to” and remember the love that brought you to the person you call yours. Oh, if you are still waiting for “the one” don’t forget to show the most important person in your life…next to God…yourself. Nothing is truer than the pure fact “to love someone else you must first love yourself.”

Me? I’m going to spend the weekend with the love that God placed on this earth especially for me, my husband of eight and a half years….passion doesn’t fade; it just gets better!