Valentine Cards: The Meaning Behind the Message

The delivery of a dozen red roses is a delightful Valentine’s Day gift that smells as good as it looks. But the first thing you do is reach for the card because the true meaning is in the message. Reading “Happy Valentine’s Day” is a disappointment, because your paramour could have said so much more...

Alexei Quintero Gonzalez and Richard Koestner analyzed the content of 300 Valentine's Day announcements in an attempt to interpret the romantic emotions behind the messages.[i] They recognize a significant advantage of using Valentine announcements to investigate emotional expressivity as the fact that they constitute “meaningful, self-initiated social behavior.” They describe Valentine's announcements as public expressions of positive emotions about a partner and relationship. Perhaps not surprisingly, more announcements were placed by individuals who were dating rather than married.

Source: Image by congerdesign on Pixabay

Messaging Matters

Once you open that card, what does it say? According to research, it depends on both gender and your relationship with the gift-giver.

Gonzalez and Koestner found gender differences within the expressed emotions, which included praise, love, commitment, and fidelity as expressed by individuals who were either dating or married. They found that women emphasized love and fidelity more than men, and men emphasized praise and commitment more than women did. These gender differences were influenced by relationship status. Men who were dating their partners expressed commitment, but not fidelity.

In terms of specific examples, when expressing romantic feelings, Gonzalez and Koestner note that men were more likely to tell their partner “you are wonderful, great, amazing”—or other words related to praise, instead of saying “I love you.” Women, on the other hand, were more likely to directly express love. They note this difference appears to expose the discomfort men feel expressing vulnerable emotions, such as love, prompting them to express praise instead, which is more likely a reflection of pride.

Gonzalez and Koestner note that with respect to relationship-specific emotions, women were more likely to express fidelity, but there was no gender difference in expressing commitment. Couples who were dating were much more likely than married couples to place Valentine's announcements in the first place, but the announcements themselves expressed the lowest levels of love and praise.

Couples who were married with children were the most likely to recognize their partner through expressing praise, but least likely to mention fidelity and commitment—a finding the authors suggest might be due to the fact that tying the knot and having a family constitute behavioral markers and evidence of fidelity and commitment that diminish the need to announce these types of emotions.

Great Expectations

Gonzalez and Koestner found the most intriguing finding was the gender difference in expressing relationship-related positive affect by couples who were dating. In contrast to women who expressed fidelity and commitment to dating partners, men who were dating (as opposed to married) expressed high levels of commitment, but there was hardly any mention of expressed fidelity. They note this suggests that although dating men may express commitment to signal interest in a long-term relationship, they may not believe it is as important to express their fidelity—yet.