Fatalistic Valentiner

I hate Valentines Day. It has nothing to do with the fact that I punctured my son's eardrum last valentines day, had a miscarriage the valentines before, or had my babysitter run away from my house and be chased down by her parents the year before, I really just think it is a putrid holiday. I hated this holiday before all that crap happened. The real reason I hate Valentines is the reason I LOVE Halloween. People pretend to be something that in fact they are not. I think about romantic relationships and have them placed into several categories in my head. The Cheaters, The Cowards who want to cheat (but are afraid of getting busted), widows, those who have never loved, those who were in love but have drifted apart as a result of trials and life, those who despise their spouse but are too lazy to get divorced, the "friends", the lop-sided relationships where one person thinks things are picture-perfect and the other partner is suffocating in marital despair, and the the floaters who float by comfortably. I am, of course, excluding newlyweds since they are mostly freaks and are hormonally altered. I am not saying that there are no happily married people. They are few and far between in my opinion, but I am sure they exist. I think people can be happy, and be married, but Marital Bliss is as realistic as the easter bunny. My question is this....why for one day, do people pretend? It is as strange a practice as someone who doesn't believe in Christ having a Nativity in their yard at Christmas time. I think that those flowers husbands buy their wives would be far more productive on a day she has spent with a GI bug barfing into the toilet all day. Or a husband could surprise her with her favorite perfume one day because he notices that she is out. Women, why not make our husband a special candle-lit dinner on a day we know he has a rough schedule, or fill up his tank of gas when we see it is empty and know he will be rushed in the morning on the way to work. Don't you think if we did these things along the way, we would quit floating through marriage, or despising our partners, or cheating, or helping them feel justified about cheating. I wouldn't know....I don't do these things. My marriage has fallen into several of these categories in our ten years of being together. Right now we are floating. Floating is good....it buys us some time, but you can only float so long. I can tell you one thing I will not be doing on Valentines, and that is writing an ooey gooey mushy Hallmark Card filled with fflowery bullshit just because it is February Fourteenth. I will talk to my husband about his day, give him a realistic gift and a card that is sincere, and hope that nobody dies or gets hospitalized.