In a society, adamant about magnifying the pressure to gift, spend and deplete the bank on Valentine’s Day, I want to reflect on what love truly means. This romantic day of showing and expressing love has become a money-making, stress-inducing, overly expensive meal, or trip where we teether on being authentic and often doubting we are good enough. Advertisements, movies, and even social media cajole us into believing love needs to be celebrated a certain way.
According to the dictionary, to love is to have a deep affection for someone, but I believe it is a combined emotion with the simultaneous act of showing affection. It is one thing to love someone or even yourself, but to respect it enough not to hurt it, also means love.
Valentine’s Day to me is a celebration. A moment to shine and bask in the glow that stems from the pit of your belly when you know you are valued and loved. Love can grow between you and someone else, and the joy of celebrating a relationship can feel very special. Good relationships manifest with time, attention, care and most importantly with you loving yourself. I want to acknowledge how far we have evolved as a society, and that the relationship we have with ourselves is just as important and should be a priority.
There is a huge push for self-love and valuing yourself before you can go and give love to someone else. I admire how society now celebrates a woman treating and putting herself first instead of frowning upon that through an old-fashioned lens.
Love can be channelled in different ways, through self-love, the relationship with a partner, friends or even family. No specific love bond wins, it is simply the rush of knowing you are worthy and valued that increases mental well-being, confidence, and even motivation.
I find it interesting that Gary Chapman, the Author of The 5 Love Languages®, was able to dissect our primal and most organic way of showing love through his widely popular five love languages. He believed we each express love in one of five ways; words of affirmation (compliments), quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service, and physical touch. Over the years of his counselling practice, he said that the way to discover another person’s love language was to see how they express love, and he theorized that people tend to naturally show love in the way they prefer to receive love.
When we celebrate this Valentine’s Day and re-spark the romance, it might be a fun way to increase communication and foster deeper feelings by sharing your love language with your significant other. Take the test to determine which love language resonates most with you.
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