Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day to all you lovers out there. I've always thought of Valentine's Day as an interesting holiday, cherished by many as the most romantic of all days, but derided by others as the Hallmarkiest of Hallmark holidays. Having been married for over three years, I must admit that Valentine's Day now takes a pretty significant back seat to my wedding anniversary when it comes to important romantic holidays, but I nevertheless take the opportunity to show some gesture of my love and gratitude.

In anticipation of the big day, the New York Times published an interesting article over the weekend, studying the practice of gift-giving in relationships (both on February 14 and other days generally) and whether it correlates with successful long-term relationships. It's a difficult article to excerpt, but I'll give it my best shot.

As if we needed another sign that Valentine’s Day is getting awfully expensive, the coupon Web sites [LivingSocial, Groupon] have now gotten into the game...

These group buying sites may be trying to strike decent bargains for users. But now that so many people subscribe to their e-mails, gift givers have to be playing a weird psychic game with themselves. Will he know I used a Groupon? Will she think less of me for doing so? Cut-rate romance feels somehow wrong, so plenty of people simply pay up. It’s a special day, after all.

Once you head down that road, however, it’s hard not to feel like a sucker, swept up in the frenzy of an occasion that might not have endured were it not for the Hallmark crowd. After all, there is something kind of pathetic about having to designate a day to be good to your mate. Still, we dutifully participate in this mass ritual of public devotion, paying extra for the prix fixe while packed elbow to elbow with others when it would be way more romantic to have a great restaurant mostly to ourselves the next night.

It all seems wrong somehow. So I set out to prove that successful couples have gotten wise to all the fuss and spend less on gifts for one another as time passes. No such luck, alas. The data does not seem to exist. What I did discover, however, was that many of us were probably taking the wrong approach to quantifying our generosity in the first place. Long-term relationships do not survive without gifts, to be sure. But they are not the gifts you may think...

Many gifts are of the psychological and intangible sort. They range from simple empathy, affection and a catch-all category called “understanding,” to complex actions like sacrificing your career so your family can move to a city where a spouse or partner has a new and better job.

This is a useful construct during tough economic times. Worrying about the gift-giving ritual is a high-class problem, after all. But if you count yourselves among the working (or nonworking) class and can’t afford to buy many gifts, it sure seems as if there are still plenty of gifts you can give...

This maps exactly, it turns out, to some of the findings of Terri Orbuch, a professor at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan who leads a continuing study of married couples that dates to the mid-1980s. “Romance and passion is all about using the elements of surprise and the elements of newness,” she said. “That’s what couples say, and that’s what I’ve found in the research.”

So practice random acts of generosity, whether it’s with traditional gifts or more psychic ones. And if you and your better half want to partake in this national ritual of devotion, it certainly can’t hurt.

But it probably isn’t necessary, either.

Yeah, I ended up excerpting more than I'd planned, but I think it's an interesting article. There's significant discussion in the article as to the difference between courtship and marriage, and how gestures of gift-giving change (or don't change) over time. My wife and I have certainly dialed back the "spending money" type of gift-giving over the years (especially since we combined our finances when we got married), but we've probably stepped it up in terms of the intangible gifts.

From a personal standpoint--and recognizing that all relationships are different--I don't think our relationship has suffered much because I don't buy her flowers every February like clockwork. In all honesty, I think the concept of buying her flowers on a random Tuesday in April seems much more romantic. But that certainly doesn't mean I should (or do) ignore Valentine's Day entirely. It can be a difficult balance to strike, but relationships (especially romantic relationships) are all about striking difficult balances.

It's never easy to know how much gift-giving is too much or not enough, especially when the answer might--and often does--change over time. But we certainly shouldn't assume that spending more on Valentine's Day is sufficient to support a good relationship. Now get out there and buy some flowers and chocolate, cheapskate.

[New York Times]