Valentine’s Day is supposed to be a day of romance, passion and indulgence as couples express their love for each other but, as Michael Sheather discovers, for some Valentine’s Day marks the beginning of the end.
Terri hadn’t even thought about Valentine’s Day when she got a phone call from Jason, her boyfriend of six months, asking her out to a romantic, flowers-and-champagne dinner for two with all the trimmings and emotional expectations.
And the reason she hadn’t thought about Valentine’s Day is because she’s been too busy thinking about how her relationship with Jason “just wasn’t working out”.
“And now I am faced with this moral dilemma – do I go to dinner, knowing that he’s going to spend a lot of money to impress me, but then have to lie about what I’m feeling? Do I tell him at dinner? Or do I tell him straight out and break up with him on Valentine’s Day, which just seems so harsh?”
What’s a girl to do? Terri met Jason six months ago while on an overseas holiday. They hit it off as a holiday romance but the attraction simply hasn’t lasted for Terri since they returned to Sydney.
“The truth is he is three years younger than me, and while it was all fun and good times on holiday, he’s really in a different place in he is life with different expectations, says Terri, 26. “I just don’t think we are going anywhere. I’ve been agonising about it ever since he asked me.”
Of course, Terri can take some heart from the fact that a recent survey found 47 per cent of couples break up on or around Valentine’s Day, making it a celebration that almost as fraught for love as it is fabulous.
Terri’s strategy, she says, will probably be to avoid the awkward. “I’ll tell him I can’t make it because I have to work, and then wait until another less intense time to tell him how I’m feeling. That’s probably the best solution rather than go along with something I just don’t feel.”
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