Seven years ago, I spent most of Valentine’s Day worrying about whether or not making a move on someone you like on the day of Cupid’s pink and red assault on the world was a stupid idea. Mostly because on February 13th, at a houseparty out in the hinterlands of south Dublin, I’d been quite brave and approached a lad who I believed to be both very sound and very attractive.
I remember clearly dispensing this information to my girlfriends in college in the canteen, who were appalled. You’re going to try it on with him on Valentine’s weekend? That’s very brave of you – as though somehow the calendar made all the other circumstances higher in the risk department. As though the stakes involved in failing mid-February were somehow more steep than they would be if I were to fail a week later.
Once all my wine-fuelled courage had curdled into a hangover, I found myself very concerned that showing interest in someone on Valentine's Day was not, in fact, romantic. Instead, maybe it was mortifying. Maybe it was silly. I sat in Dún Laoghaire nursing my hangover and worrying I'd scuppered any chance of more than a cheeky late-night smooch by scheduling my attempt at charming him over Valentine's. He hadn't replied to my very chill next-day text, a measured, "How's the head?" A text which, because it was sent on February 14th, ran the chance of being perceived as a box of chocolates, a jumbo-sized perfume-drenched card, a bouquet of roses and a cluster of heart-shaped balloons. I was scarlet for myself, but willing to take that leap anyway. He really was very, very sound.
Baby feminist
I was a baby feminist, 22 and still working out how to be assured and confident. Back then, Girls Running The World wasn’t as common a turn of phrase, or at least in the circles I moved through. I was still very concerned about propriety, and how Irish society judges women who step forward for what they want, up to and including when what they want is a Very Sound Lad, mid-February.
St Valentine himself, in all the myths that surround his origins, was a rebel. One story tells he was a Roman priest who served during the 3rd century. A particularly cruel decree by Emperor Claudius II outlawed marriage for young men, as single men made more valiant soldiers than married men. Valentine thought this unjust and struck out against Claudius, marrying couples in secret. He was caught, and sentenced to death. Another legend tells that Valentine helped Christians escape Roman prisons, and while jailed himself, he fell in love with a captor's daughter. He wrote her a note of romantic confession, the first letter signed 'From your Valentine'.
All that considered, shouldn’t Valentine’s day then make us a little braver? In retrospect, I’d love to appear like some Cupid from the future to the concerned girl drinking a coffee at the 40 Foot and worrying if texting “How’s the head?” was like saying “I love you”. I’d lean in and tell her to cop right on to herself. St Valentine risked his life and broke actual laws for the love of young couples. Springtime is when the world wakes up after the winter, of course it should make us braver. Being brave about our hearts is a mark of valour, not necessarily of naivety.
He wrote back that evening. We went on a date the next week, and another the next. I moved across the country a few months later, then, a year after that, in with him. We left for America in 2012, where, on an October evening in 2013, I asked him to marry me – not on February 29th, as people often ask when I reveal that I proposed. You don’t need a date on the calendar to prompt you to make the leap – or to stop you making leaps at all. The calendar should have nothing to do with it, nor should concerns about societal perceptions of forwardness. The person, and how sound they are, should have everything to do with it.
If you’re looking for a signal this weekend to do something you’re nervous about, I’ll take the Cupid mantle for just a second and say this is it. Here’s the signal. Ignore Valentine’s, or embrace Valentine’s – take the leap you need to take.
