Isn't it morantic.

Hey look at that tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. But I guess before we make it there we have to make it through today, a monday. Bah Humbug.

Here’s yesterday’s Sunday Times Valentine’s Day column.

kisses and smooches.
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ISN’T IT MORANTIC, I MEAN, ROMANTIC.

Matthew Gray Gubler needs a good smack, if you ask me. He’s really not helping. Between him and Hollywood, the ever-hopeful romantic women of this world don’t stand a chance. I mean it all sounds very charming and lovely, but it’s just not realistic, is it? C’mon Matthew, C’mon Hollywood, really?

Does anyone here know of someone to whom any of the following has actually happened in real life? (And I mean actually know someone, not know someone who knows someone whose cousin heard that it happened to their boyfriend’s sister):

– Someone escaped through security and chased a lover down in an airport, to stop them boarding an airplane so they could declare their undying love and be together forever, happily ever after, sans morning breath.

– Someone organised a flash mob of perfect strangers to surprise a loved one with a synchronised, choreographed dance in the food court at a mall.

Okay so that last one was based on a cartoon, but anyway, you get my point.

And I’m not trying to be all bah humbug here about Romance or anything, I really do enjoy those scenes and the picture Matthew Gray Gubler paints, really I do, but at some point we have to admit that they almost never happen in real life. Maybe one in twenty or thirty thousand relationships experiences big romantic gestures on that kind of scale, or the kind of romance Matty alludes to on an extended basis.

It’s not you, girls and boys, I swear it. Love just isn’t that neat and tidy. On planet real world perfectly worded, uninterrupted and heartfelt monologues like ‘I’m just a girl standing in front of a boy…’ or ‘you had me at hello…’ don’t just pour out of a person’s mouth fully formed. On the whole men are non-communicative and mostly non-com
mittal. Women want unattainable things. It doesn’t rain or shine on demand. People cheat, we don’t always dress well, or wake up with perfect makeup. We’re fickle, and sometimes we fart. The truth is, we live in real life, not in the movies.

And I’m sorry Matthew Gray Gubler, but please can we just try to be even a little bit realistic here. Two years into a relationship, people do not only want ‘butterfly kisses in the morning, peanut butter sandwiches shaped like a heart, and to make you smile until it hurts.’Rather, two years into a relationship people want you to remember to take the bins out on a Tuesday, change the cat litter, put the damn cap back on the blimming toothpaste when you’ve finished with it, and for you not to leave your used teabag on the side of the sink, that’s what people really want.

So this Valentine’s Day, while I’d certainly like it if a guy hired an airplane and wrote a personalised romantic Haiku in the sky above my office, I’m realistic enough to admit that instead I’ll more than likely just get a card. Typed. In a text message.