True romance or an excuse to eat chocolate?

By Colin Allen

Couples: Get ready for your big day. As always, Valentine’s Day is the biggest holiday of the year for love and romance. Stores are stocked up with roses, cards and heart-shaped chocolate boxes. Restaurants are booked, dates are set and people are desperately looking for new ways to express their love. But behind the hoopla, many see Valentine’s Day as simply over-hyped. For them, the day is too commercial and too stressful for authentic romance.

“Everybody handles this day differently,” says Jack Thompson, Ph.D., a psychologist based in Santa Rosa, California. Some people are sincere about the holiday, while others are just going through the motions. Asks Thompson, “It’s one day of focus, but what happens to the other 364 days?”

Others are not so quick to discount the holiday. For people in long-term relationships, a little romantic reminder may be what’s needed. “In our daily lives we often forget to put a little romance in our

relationships,” argues Shirley Glass, Ph.D., a psychologist based in Owings Mills, Maryland. “Show me something symbolic to let me feel we still have some of the old oomphwe used to have.”

As the holiday quickly approaches, people can choose to make it romantic or make it just another day. It will be what you want it to be.

Originally published at Psychology Today