Valentine's Day is a Trap...

...don't fall in.
The anxiety of Valentine's Day started for me in grammar school which was about 180 years ago. It was a simpler time, a time before political correctness, before it was determined we needed to protect children from the realities of life. So we brought valentines to school but not for every single, friggin' child in the class, only for the ones we liked. We covered shoe boxes with crepe paper and ribbons and paper hearts, and then we cut a slit in the top and people went around dropping valentines into your box.
Or not.
Ah, what a great ego-killing exercise. Real Life 101, teaching us about rejection and disappointment. Here's where I learned that life is all about getting your heart stomped on, when Jim Evans didn't put a valentine in my shoe box in third grade.
Is it any wonder I'm a cynical Valentine's Day-hater? Is it any wonder no one ever accused me of being a romantic?
So if this is your first year in a new relationship and you're wondering what to do for V-Day I hope you and your new valentine are on the same page. And remember, whatever you do now you're setting a precedent. So if you go all out you're going to have to top it next year and in two years and possibly thirty. Do relationships really need more pressure than what's intrinsically built in?
And if you're already in a committed relationship do you need a trumped-up, pseudo-holiday to remind you to say I love you?