Valentine’s Day can be a depressing day when you’re in an unhappy or shaky marriage. In every store or advertisement you see romantic cards, heart-shaped boxes of candy, or select jewelry for
special lover’s day.Restaurants publish their special menus in advance and give food items names such as “lover’s delight chocolate dessert.” Radio stations sponsor contests focused around theme of Valentine’s Day, and newspapers run pictures and stories about spouses with long marriages. Everywhere you turn, you are bombarded with pictures and stories of happy lovers.
What can you do to survive Valentine’s Day when you are worried sick that your marriage is on rocks? How do you deal with all love hoopla when your spouse doesn’t know if he or she really loves you or wants to stay married?
The following seven tips will help you to keep your perspective and sanity:
1. Be your own valentine this year and celebrate wonderful person that you are. Make an appointment to have a massage or pedicure on Valentine’s Day as a present to yourself. Or make plans with a friend to dine at a gourmet restaurant either on Valentine’s Day or day before. Buy yourself a new CD or book that you’ve been wanting. Leave work early, if possible, and do something fun such as going to a movie in middle of work afternoon.
2. Make a commitment to love yourself and to treat yourself with care and respect. Resolve to take good care of yourself by exercising, eating right, taking time to relax and see friends, and getting enough rest. Throw any martyr tendencies out window and make your health and wellbeing a top priority. This is not being selfish. If you don’t nurture yourself first, you won’t be in any shape to give quality energy and time to your marriage.
3. Commit to being okay no matter what happens in your marriage. It’s essential that you make yourself a promise that you’ll have a quality life with or without your spouse. By showing respect for yourself and belief in your ability to thrive whether married or not, you’ll be coming from a place of empowerment and strength. The attributes of personal strength and confidence attract others and engender respect, making you a more desirable partner.
4. Accept uncertainty and see it as an opportunity to flex your faith muscles, build resiliency, and develop discipline to live in present moment as much as possible. With practice, you can learn to curb your tendency to worry about future and can expand more of your energy into making most of time you have now. Everyone has periods of time when everything is up in air and how things will turn out is unknown. And as poet Walt Whitman reminds us, “The future is no more uncertain than present.”
