Valentine’s Day is supposed to be a day of love and romance. We see heart-shaped decorations wherever we look. Couples are anxious to make restaurant reservations at the most coveted spots to maximize the romance they expect from this day. However, romance might significantly be dampened for some of us who feel pressure from their partners or from friends and family. For some, Valentine’s Day might feel more like a relationship performance review, when partners try to get a sense of each other’s commitment and effort by evaluating each other’s romantic performance. This evaluative quality stems not just from each partner’s personal insecurities or inquisitive questions from others. Rather, it emerges from well-documented psychological mechanisms involving temporal landmarks and social comparison, which can converge unusually strongly around this holiday.
Research on temporal landmarks has shown that special days in the calendar (e.g., New Year’s Eve or one’s birthday) create landmarks that can lead us to evaluate, take stock, and increase willingness to change. We know that many failed New Year’s resolutions result from this principle (Steinmetz, 2024). However, Valentine’s Day can be a similar landmark in the calendar for romantic couples, who might compare the state of their relationship to their desired ideal when such a landmark comes around. This can invite questions such as: Where is this relationship going? or Does my partner’s effort match my expectations for this stage? Importantly, a missed romantic gesture around such a landmark seems much more informative about the state of the relationship than it would on other, regular days. This can increase the psychological pressure people feel around Valentine’s Day—and nothing kills romance as reliably as pressure.
Not least due to social media, romantic gestures have moved from private signs of affections to public displays that can be compared with those of others. Research suggests that people can change their behavior based on how they expect others to interpret it, even when those observers are only hypothetical (Eyal et al., 2009). As a result, Valentine’s Day comparisons often lead to social comparisons between friends and co-workers, even if these comparisons are just imagined or happen only on social media. Importantly, these comparisons focus only on what’s immediately visible—for example the expensive dinner, champagne, or gifts. What really matters for a happy relationship, such as shared laughter or support, is not reflected on Valentine’s Day social media posts or stories of expensive getaways. Nevertheless, the potential of social comparison can create further pressure to make Valentine’s Day look special, instead of feel special.
If you feel pressure creeping up around Valentine’s Day, consider whether you might be focused on your relationship as a status marker. It can help to think about what we really value in a relationship to put some perspective on expensive gifts or flashy gestures. Seen through this lens, Valentine’s Day can give us an opportunity to ask how the relationship is going and where we might expect it to be at the next temporal landmark: Next year’s Valentine’s Day.