Valentines Day celebrates romance, which almost everyone wants, and many never experience.
We conceptualize the past through stories of great lovers – Tristan and Isolde, Romeo and Juliet, Venus and Mars. (The gods not the planets.) David and Jade in the 1979 Scott Spencer novel Endless Love should be on that list: made into two awful big-budget movies, it’s still a great book.
Note: see the end for a selection of favorite love songs.
We tend to assume all great loves were in the past, because we romanticize the past – there’s that word again. Today people are hooking up on Tinder, that’s not romance, not like galloping a horse through a howling midnight storm to reach the man or woman of your desire.
Photo courtesy Spangler Candies.
Considering population growth, this Valentines Day the total amount of romance in the world should be at a record high. But is it?
“There's less love being made. Sexual dissatisfaction and emotional disconnection are prevalent… there is strong evidence that sexual intimacy between heterosexual couples is in decline,” Psychology Today (it still exists!) observed in 2023.
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