🌹 Valentine's in Lockdown
Sunday Scoop #31 - With Valentine's falling on a Sunday this year, I recycle the 2nd issue of this newsletter as a quick reminder to not take the people we love (romantic & platonic) for granted.
Hey friends,
For the 2nd time in 3 months, I'm gonna cheat a little.
Here’s why.
For our Valentine’s in Lockdown, my partner and I spent the day watching a couple of Netflix shows, a quick drive around the neighborhood and took a few photos ‘for the Gram’1.
One of the shows we watched was S9E14 of Modern Family- "Written in the Stars".
I’d promised to spend the entire day with my partner since we hadn’t seen much of each other due to Lockdown and we’ve both been pretty pre-occupied with work lately. Valentine’s was a chance to reconnect with each other.
Hence, I was mildly considering breaking the 30-week streak and calling it off for this issue. However, as I watched Modern Family, it struck me that instead of writing an original article, I can simply semi-recycle the 2nd issue of Sunday Scoop, Re-appreciating Relationships.
Considering we welcomed more than 140 new subscribers since then, I hope this semi-recycled issue still brings value to you!
(If you’ve read this article before and don’t fancy yourself a re-read, head right to the end of the article for my Closing Remarks for this issue).
🌹 Re-appreciating Relationships
📺 Show Context
In this episode, one of the main male characters, Jay, decided that his marriage needed a little spicing up, and he came up with an idea to do a little roleplay with his wife, Gloria. For Valentine's Day, Jay decided to meet Gloria at a nice hotel in town, act as if they were complete strangers with an alternate persona, and tried to ask each other out on a first date. However, their evening was ruined by a number of complications, one of which involved a hotel security staff's blunder, as he mistakenly assumed that Gloria was a prostitute.
I'll let you enjoy the storyline yourself, so let me get straight to my point.
Jay told Gloria that the one thing he learned that night was how immensely difficult it was to ask her out on a first date again, the butterflies he had in his stomach, and the jitters he felt. It put things into perspective for him, and he realized just how out of his league Gloria was. It helped him to rediscover a deep sense of appreciation for Gloria, and he realized that he should never take his marriage for granted.
💭 Thoughts
As I was doing the dishes, I tried to imagine asking my girlfriend on a first date again. I came to the same conclusion as Jay. The experience was nerve-wracking, even in my imagination. After I spent a brief moment wondering how lucky I must've been to land her, I had a moment of gratitude for how comfortable and familiar our relationship seems now despite being past the honeymoon phase.
In romantic relationships, it is perfectly normal for the honeymoon phase to blow over and for things to come to a steadier pace. That is when most people feel that the spark in their relationship has extinguished and the "fiery passion" that was once burning fiercely is now but a glowing kindle, trying to survive strong, cruel gusts of wind.
It’s extremely easy to take each other for granted just because his/her presence in our life seems like a given. However, if we are willing to take just a bit of time to think about how we would feel if we were going to ask our partner out on a first date, it might just be what we need to put things into perspective for ourselves.
Mind you, this doesn’t just work for romantic relationships. The same rule applies to relationships of other natures as well.
Think about your friends. When you first got to know them, were you not eager to get close to them and reach a stage in your friendship where you can talk about anything? Imagine not having a particular friend, would it add or remove value from your life? When I thought about my circle of friends, in almost all cases, I realized that what I have with them now is exactly what I had hoped for when I first got to know them, if not more. The value and support they have added to my life is also something that I wouldn't trade for anything in the world.
This thought experiment will be my default advice from now on whenever people ask me if they should break up with their partner because the spark is no longer there. I think it serves as a pretty good litmus test for whether the relationship is still worth salvaging. If a person were to feel that they wouldn’t ask their partner on a first date if they were given the chance, that would be a clear indicator that things have hit a rough patch for quite some time and both partners have quite a bit of work ahead of them.
💬 Closing Remarks
Even as I copy-pasted the article above, I can’t help but get a bit of jitters when I think about asking my partner out on a first date again.
We’ve grown to be so comfortable that I sometimes fail to fully appreciate just how understanding and genuine a partner she is. Never ceases to amaze me how far we’ve come together.
I also took some time to consider how I felt when I first met my friends.
I went to Secondary School with just a handful of Primary School friends. I ventured into College with none of my Secondary Schoolmates.
Breaking the ice was quite the process during the initial months but I could often forget about that, now that we’re close. Looking forward to move back to college and spend the last semester with them.
With that said, I hope that this idea that we should try imagining re-breaking the ice with our friends/re-asking our partners on a first date that I’m sharing with you today adds value in some way, shape and form to your life.
Enjoyed this issue?
Consider subscribing to my weekly newsletter, Sunday Scoop🍨 where I share:-
* a short article on a few life lessons I've picked up/productivity method I'm experimenting within the week
* links to the favourite contents I consumed that week
* a question to ponder on for the week (or a challenge if I'm feeling cheeky!)
If this seems interesting to you, feel free to subscribe to my email newsletter below!
despite my continuous reluctance
Awesome article and I wish the best for the both of you (You both are a really cute couple, might I add..).