Tag Archives: Valentine’s Day

Commentary, Photography

Your Valentine

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Today is the feast day of Saint Valentine, an early Christian martyr who was executed on this day (or July 6 or 30, depending on whichever branch of Christianity) in circa 269. Well, we aren’t sure what year, and that’s because there are a number of early Christian martyrs named Valentine who are all recognised as saints by the Roman Catholic Church.

But if there’s one thing historians agree on, it’s that the stories around Valentine are probably apocryphal since there are so many of them, all different. Nevertheless and whatever you believe, one commonality is that Valentine is said to have performed the miracle of restoring sight to the daughter of his Roman jailer and that just before he was executed, he wrote her a letter and signed it “your Valentine.”

Another commonality and the one that more closely lead to him becoming the patron saint of lovers is that before he was imprisoned for his religious beliefs he supposedly married a number of Christian Roman soldiers who otherwise would not have been able to tie the knot.

But as so often happens throughout history, centuries passed and the identity and religious purpose of Saint Valentine’s Day became almost completely obscured. By the 14th century his popularity was revived but only because of the notions of courtly love invented by the English writer Geoffrey Chaucer and a bit further on, also by William Shakespeare. 500 years later he appeared again because the Victorians liked the concept of ideal romantic love and set about establishing many of the traditions – such as the giving of cards – that we are familiar with today.

Whether you celebrate – either from a religious or secular perspective – Saint Valentine’s Day or not, it is a good time to recognise the importance of unselfish love and all it can accomplish. 🩷

Commentary, Happy Holidays!, musings, Photography

Happy Lupercalia! Well, Maybe Not

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Although the origins of St Valentine’s Day are somewhat shrouded in mystery, it’s likely that it was intended by the early Christian church to replace the ancient Roman fertility feast and celebration of Lupercalia with a more religious one.

Lupercalia was evidently a licentious, drunken, three-day blowout from February 13-15 where animals were sacrificed and their skins used to beat young women – apparently to ensure their fertility – followed by young men pulling the names of these young women from a jar as part of a mating ritual: the lottery of love!

Sounds brutal. I think I would have been in hiding somewhere outside the Palatine Hill. Yikes.

Ostensibly, into this mix came a couple of early Christian priests named Valentine, both of whom were executed by Emperor Claudius II on February 14 but in different years. They were honoured by the early church with a celebration in their name: St. Valentine’s Day.

About three centuries later, Pope Gelasius tried to get people to wear clothes and to eliminate the pagan aspects of Lupercalia by reframing it as St. Valentine’s Day, which was supposed to be a day of religious reflection and observance.

In the meantime, though, the busy Normans were celebrating something called Galatin’s Day – galatin meant “lover of women.” It seems that the word galatin became confused with Valentine, the Normans conquered England and passed it on, and the rest is history. The pope’s effort to make the original celebration a religious one was in vain.

Throw in some major romanticism from Chaucer and Shakespeare and we now have a “day of love” that’s cast in stone – or maybe that’s rose petals.

Happy Valentine’s, everyone. ❤️

Commentary, musings, Photography

Some Valentine’s Thoughts

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Valentine’s Day can be a cute, lighthearted day, but I don’t like what has become of it. When I was in elementary school, it was fun to make cards, colour hearts and take them home for friends and family. There would likely be a few heart-shaped chocolates or a heart-shaped cake for dessert. It was a low-key, fun day.

Now, advertisers try to make us feel like moral degenerates if we don’t buy flowers, chocolates, restaurant meals and some sort of sexy present for our significant other, if we have one. It’s sort of, spend money, and spend THIS way, otherwise you don’t care about or love your people.

My M and I disagree. We don’t believe in giving special attention on just one day; we try to show it every day. We avoid going to restaurants or buying gifts for Valentine’s Day; the commercial demand that we celebrate in an “appropriate” way by spending money in a super-busy restaurant with over-worked staff who are serving up limp meals is not something on which we’re willing to spend money.

We would much rather go at a time of our choosing and really enjoy it. Give flowers at any time just because. Do little things and show in numerous ways how much we love and appreciate each other. Enjoy a chocolate heart.

But be guilted into a formulaic response so that big companies can collect money? No thank you.

What is your opinion?

Narcissism - One Woman's True Story of Marriage to a Narcissist

Emotional Labour and the Seasonal Narcissist, Part II

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NPD narcissists consume a huge amount of emotional labour. And before you know it, you can be down on your knees, completely exhausted, while the narcissist continues to, at the very least, be extremely dissatisfied.

There is no filling them up. They are never full. They are never sated. They are never content.

They simply have periods of digestion. Slowing down, savouring, enjoying … that’s not something with which they’re comfortable.

And yet, they desire the relief that slowing down and savouring can bring. They want it desperately and will chase it far and wide, but don’t know when they have it and are even scared of attaining it.

If they slow down … they might have to really consider themselves. And why bother with doing that? Because there you are, ready and willing to help them avoid their inadequacies and polish their fantasies.

Your love, your work, your labour will save them. At least for now. Until you do something human that screws up their picture of you and they start convincing you that there’s serious stuff wrong with you.

Up until that point, you’ve been pouring your emotional energy into them to shore them up, to give them a sense of self-confidence, to make them happy, to take away their pain, to provide them with everything they think they have been missing. And you’re beginning to feel depleted and exhausted.

But that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Because when you start to think that they’re right, that there’s stuff wrong with you and that that’s why they’re detaching, you will bear down even more.

You will expend labour on improving yourself, fixing yourself, correcting yourself. You will forget about your efforts to help them. There’s a terrifying, growing list of stuff you have to attend to, right now, before they walk out the door forever and it will be all your fault. Your emotions are twangling like a poorly strung violin.

All that work. All that labour. And this is what you get?

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How did this happen?

Well,  it happened because that’s how a true NPD narcissist is. The second they acquire whatever they have been chasing, they lose interest. And make no mistake, you are a “whatever.” After the chase has been won, you simply become a source of supply. Supplying what? A supply of whatever the narcissist saw as being desirable to take from you.

It could be money. Or status. Or connections. Or a place to live. Or warm fuzzies. Maybe it was all of those. It could be that you provided yourself as a person to control. Or as a person to feel superior to. Or maybe you’re a challenge to be dismantled, in which case you supply him with proof that no one is better than he is. Whatever the combination of holes you were filling for the narcissist … that’s what you were doing. Filling holes.

And filling holes is time consuming, hard labour with little reward; few of us will want to shout, oh, look what I did! A hole to be proud of!

So. The seasonal narcissist. A narcissist behaves according to three operational seasons: idealising, devaluing and discarding.

Oh yes. Narcissists can take apart a seasonal holiday, too. I’ve written about that before, and you can read my scribblings here and here. But to the narcissist, you are also seasonal, and you have a beginning, middle and end.

Is there anything seasonal about the narcissist from a conventional point of view? Yes, there is.

Think Hallowe’en. Think hobgoblin.

Personally, I tend to think dentist, as in that stuff you find in the spit cup they give you. I certainly don’t think Valentine’s Day. If there’s a season out there for the narcissist to manipulate your emotional labour and “prove” to you that you’re anything but special, it’s Valentine’s. In fact, it’s one of their favourite discard days.

Have you had a seasonal experience with a narcissist?