(Originally published on TheScoop2017, February 2017)
This is a continuation of Valentine’s Day chocolates do not help beat the sugar addiction.
If we want to be helpful to those who are trying to kick the sugar habit, let’s forgo the chocolates and reinvent Valentine’s Day.
Reading about Saint Valentine serves as a launching pad to fresh ideas to celebrate the holiday in ways that are meaningful and relationship building. Read the whole story here Saint Valentine.
St. Valentine realized marriage was a long-term commitment, one not to be entered into lightly, because it can get hard. The rush of love a couple initially feels will eventually be replaced with the realities of each other’s faults. As love matures from feelings of being in love to making the choice to love despite one’s faults, there will be times of struggle. It is through these times, he realized, couples would need the help of God. Knowing how God cherished each spouse was a foundation that would help deepen the relationship instead of watching it be torn apart.
The first way to reinvent Valentine’s Day:
Write three things you like or appreciate about your spouse.
What was it that first attracted you to your spouse? What is it that you most appreciate about him or her now? What are your spouse’s unique God-given gifts? Write these on a homemade card to present to him or her on Valentine’s Day.
The second way to reinvent Valentine’s Day:
Take the Love Language test together.
After a candlelit dinner, identify your love language together here -> Love Languages
The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman is a helpful resource to understand the most effective way to communicate love to one’s spouse. By observing how your spouse generally shows his or her love to you and others may give you a clue, but Love Languages is a handy website that quickly helps ferret out yours and your partner’s primary ways you are most able to take the other’s love to heart. Five primary languages are described as: Acts of Service, Receiving Gifts, Words of Affirmation, Physical Touch, and Quality Time.
The third way to reinvent Valentine’s Day:
Plan a surprise event around your spouse’s specific love language.
For instance, if your spouse’s love language is acts of service, plan to go out of your way to take on a task you know your spouse either does not have time for or especially dislikes. Do that activity for him or her on Valentine’s Day. If her love language is physical touch, set aside a specific time that is uninterrupted and cuddle, hold hands, or rub his/her back. If it is quality time, take a walk or play a board game together.
The fourth way to reinvent Valentine’s Day:
Set aside some uninterrupted time to hold each other until you feel that connection again.
As life stresses focus your attention away from your relationship, and personality challenges wedge you apart, there is a need for reconnecting. Nothing reconnects more quickly than simply holding each other.
If there are unresolved conflicts between you, this may be difficult. Mort Fertel’s Marriage Fitness is an excellent resource for troubled relationships. Check it out if you need additional help.
The fifth way to reinvent Valentine’s Day:
Find something to work on together:
Find something in society you and your spouse both believe is an injustice or needs correcting. Discuss together how you can make a difference.
While this may be a longer-term activity, having the discussion on Valentine’s Day will bring you together over the commonality you both feel towards the issue. Write down the top two or three issues individually, then choose one you can work on together during the coming year. Discuss a few concrete things you can do together and plan times to carry this out.
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Saint Valentine was martyred for doing what he believed was right — marrying couples when the governing authorities of his day forbade the institution of marriage. He realized that without the commitment made before God and man, it would be all too easy for men and women to walk away from their relationships when it got tough. Let’s work to support that commitment in each other.
Having simple ways to connect physically, emotionally and intellectually, a couple will not only maintain their love relationship, they will watch it grow deep roots throughout the years, able to withstand the strongest storms life will throw their way. Now isn’t that much better than a box of chocolates?
Read: Valentine’s Day chocolates do not help beat the sugar addiction