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Commercially, Valentine’s Day gets bigger every year. But for many couples, the pressure to make Valentine’s Day bigger and better edges out the need and desire to set it aside as a chance to build closeness. And for some couples, Valentine’s Day underscores the fear they have of becoming increasingly intimate—and vulnerable.
Learning to Process Feelings
Tera is beginning to get a handle on what this mixed bag of feelings is and means.
"Why is it that every time things look like they could really start to heat up, that’s my cue to start scanning for an exit?” she asked Dr. B, her therapist. For years, I’ve told myself that I want true love, but somehow, I keep missing. I’ve always blamed my boyfriends. But it’s happened so many times, with really wonderful guys, that I don’t know if I believe that anymore. Is it really me—something I’m doing?"
"Well, what’s going on when you start looking for that exit?” Dr. B. asked.
"It comes when I start to realize the guy I’m dating really likes me—not just the sex or how pretty I am, but me. Then I start to feel afraid—at the very moment I should be able to let down my guard or whatever it is, and feel at ease. I’m getting there with Jaime right now. I’m turning a corner from being preoccupied with making great dinners and seducing him and generally just being ‘at my best,’ to really liking him the way he seems to like me."
"So, right on schedule, my head has started talking to me, saying things like, ‘Tera, you better break this off before it goes too far.’ Just when it looks like real trust might be happening between us, I start looking for a plausible reason to break up with him; or I even start thinking about some guy I once hooked up with and could still text if I wanted. And now, here it is: Valentine’s Day again, and I know very well just how good and how lousy it would feel if I suddenly did something stupid! Oh God, I hate Valentine’s Day!"
Safety Is Sexy
Safety is the foundation of a healthy relationship. Feeling safe allows us to reveal our vulnerability. take risks together, and bond through shared experiences.
When couples can’t tolerate safety alongside risk, anything that tests the relationship flips on the flashing red exit sign. However, once we realize that this is happening, we have the choice of deciding not to run. Like every other day spent together, Valentine’s Day is a good opportunity for couples to make that commitment—both to oneself and one another—to stay, tell each other the truth about what they’re feeling, and then stick around and see what happens next.
“So—Jamie’s inching closer. I don’t know what to do.”
"Well,” said Dr. B., “it sounds to me like you know what not to do, even if you’re unsure what to do—that is, to try out giving the two of you a shot at actually growing closer. Not surprisingly, part of you wants to get away as fast as possible—not just from Jamie, but from your mixed-up feelings—anything to avoid the risk of taking the next step. Maybe to avoid even thinking about it. But your other side already knows how safe Jamie feels, and also knows that you want that. Problem is, any kind of desire also risks loss. So, of course, you’re wondering if the best idea is to just play it safe. Again.”
"Are you saying that I don’t really want love? Because I know, at least, I think I know, that I do!"
"This isn’t an ‘either/or’ proposition. But the kind of safety I think we’re talking about doesn’t come in the first blush, and usually not in the first year or first years of a relationship. So staying can seem like a reasonable, mature, choice. But the conflict doesn’t go away even then: You still want what you’re afraid of, but it’s confusing because it doesn’t feel like fear all the time.”
"When I sit still and just think about him apart from me, Jamie seems to have all the qualities I want in the man standing next to me. I can’t help admiring him as a person as well as a boyfriend. Yes, it’s what I want. But it still freaks me out!”
"Well," said Dr. B., “if you want my suggestion, take the nuclear option off the table. Just go on a nice date. Forget the Valentine’s Day hype."
"Easier said than done, but I think I can swing it," said Tera.
Discovering Relationship Sanity
While building the opening stages of a relationship together —which can be a few years, or, for some, much longer of a truly resilient relationship, we may become disillusioned and tempted to cave to thinking the fantasy of a perfect relationship is always better than the real thing simply because it’s hard work. But that’s not what the authors find, either in clinical practice or their own lives. But it can be hard to divest from easy-to-come-by compensatory substitutes like compulsive sex and other behaviors, various addictions which allow us to step aside from exposing our vulnerability and fear.
"I don't know what this is with Jamie, and maybe I really don't need to know. And maybe Jamie and I can agree on that!"
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