A couple of years ago on Valentine's Day, my husband gave me a heart-shaped metal pendant with a red stone offset from the center. I am wearing it now. It rests beside my crucifix, the two catching the light differently when I move, one ancient in its symbolism, the other industrial, forged, and modern.
The heart has weight. It is heavy, chunky, as if it were cut from sheet metal and sanded just enough to smooth the edges. It looks as if it used to be part of something else. It did. Clark told me the metal had been repurposed from a missile fired by Israel’s Iron Dome defense system. Once, it existed to intercept an incoming rocket. Now it hangs at my throat in the shape of a heart.
It is the only Valentine’s gift I own that was designed, in its first life, to stop an explosion.
I do not like roses, or as I call them, dead flowers. I buy my own chocolate. I have no interest in lingerie gift-wrapped as obligation or teddy bears clutching satin hearts, as if sentiment could be outsourced to a seasonal aisle. The “perfect for her” displays always feel like retail shorthand for not knowing the woman at all.
Clark has never bought from that aisle. His gifts are not extravagant or performative. Rather, they are chosen because he has been paying attention.
The pendant works on several levels:
- It is protective metal reshaped into a heart.
- It acknowledges my intellectual and moral interests.
- It signals that he sees not just my body, but my mind.
That is romance to me. Not spectacle. Not flowers that wilt in a week. Not a bunch of sugary treats I could purchase myself. Romance is forged metal, redirected purpose, and the quiet declaration that I am known.
Romance and Love Are Not the Same Thing
Clark’s gifts follow a pattern: a book I had mentioned months earlier, a gadget I needed but had not prioritized. Something specific, unmistakably chosen with me in mind. That kind of romance is rare today. The modern Valentine’s script favors performance. Restaurants fill. Social feeds bloom with bouquets. Proof of love becomes visible and measurable. The question shifts from “Do I know this person?” to “Was the gesture sufficient?”
In its worst aspect, romance becomes self-referential. Did I feel adored? Did I look cherished? Did my partner execute properly?
Love asks something harder.
Have I paid attention?
The commercial aisle assumes masculine ignorance and sells symbols as substitutes for understanding. Flowers and chocolate are romantic, but in the abstract. They apply to almost anyone. Abstraction is the enemy of intimacy.
You cannot abstract a real relationship and keep it alive. Marriage especially is built on specificity, on each partner understanding the other at a deep level.
When romance detaches from love, it becomes aesthetic theater: pleasant, sometimes beautiful, but dependent on mood and novelty. Love accumulates. It is built from observation and sustained by memory. It shows up in calibrations so small no one else would notice.
That is why the pendant matters more than roses.
Roses are cultivated to be cut. Their symbolism is borrowed and their meaning is assumed.
The metal at my throat, on the other hand, was shaped to intercept violence, then redirected into something enduring. It carries a story and real personal meaning.
Romance rooted in knowledge does the same. It is not selected for the season. It is forged from attention. And it lasts far beyond a single day, though that day can be spent remembering how much you and your partner mean to one another.
Know What You Are Celebrating
I am not arguing that everyone should celebrate Valentine’s Day this way. Some couples delight in spectacle and ritual and signaling and goofy teddy bears and boxes of chocolate and carafes of wine. That may suit them perfectly.
But know what you are celebrating.
If you believe you are celebrating covenant and enduring love while your partner believes he is producing an emotional high, you are not participating in the same event. You are observing two different holidays under one name. That is where heartbreak begins.
Modern culture blurs romance and love into a single glowing concept, but the truth is, the two are not interchangeable. Romance is expressive. Love is structural. Romance thrives on passion. Love blooms through commitment.
When they align, Valentine’s Day is easy. When they do not, it becomes a test. Was it big enough? Was it visible enough? Did it prove enough?
The day shifts from “I see you” to “Prove you see me.”
Romance alone, centered on self-perception, turns the partner into an instrument. Their task becomes generating the correct feeling. That is fragile architecture.
Love, which is built on knowledge, does not fracture so easily. If Clark handed me roses tomorrow, I would be a little confused, but would understand the intent. The foundation would hold because the foundation is not a bunch of dead flowers, however pretty. It is years of attention.
If one person believes Valentine’s Day is about reaffirming covenant and the other believes it is about producing intensity, disappointment is structural, not accidental. You cannot build stability on two different definitions.
That is why my pendant matters. Not because it is unusual. Not because it is controversial. But because it proves alignment. Clark and I are celebrating the same thing. Not spectacle. Not self-perception. Recognition.
Valentine’s Day can be extravagant or quiet, symbolic or simple. But it should be honest.
Know what you are celebrating. Know what your partner is celebrating. And if those answers differ, talk before the roses wilt.
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