The history of how Saint Valentine, an early Christian martyr, became associated with romantic love is confused and murky. Some claim the first recorded association of Valentine's Day with romance is in “Parliament of Fowls,” a 1382 poem by Geoffey Chaucer. Other scholars say this is probably a misinterpretation of Chaucer’s poem. Let the scholars dispute, but no matter, today Valentine’s Day is inescapably an expression of romantic love.

Fran Lebowitz, the American humorist tells us, "Romantic love is mental illness. But it's a pleasurable one. It's a drug. It distorts reality, and that's the point of it. It would be impossible to fall in love with someone that you really saw."

The English poet William Blake said it more gracefully,



“Love to faults is always blind,

Always is to joy inclined,

Lawless, winged, and unconfined,

And breaks all chains from every mind.”



Lebowitz and Blake concur that romantic love makes us blind to the lover’s faults and provides us with joy and pleasure. The American Psychiatric Association might deny that romantic love is mental illness and insurance companies won’t pay therapists for its treatment, but most of us who have experienced it would, in retrospect, agree that it’s irrational.



It’s irrational but wonderful -- while it lasts. The challenge for us is to grow and to grow the relationship when passion for our lover fades and we come to acknowledge our partner’s faults. Anyone in a long-term marriage or relationship knows that. We have to work at loving. Unlike romantic love, real love is not mental illness; it’s a virtue. It’s the habit of unselfishness.



Ironically, Valentine’s Day in the United States is famous -- or infamous -- for something else. On February 14, 1929, Al Capone’s gangsters mowed down five members of the Bugs Moran gang and two other unfortunate folks with Thompson sub-machine guns in a north side Chicago garage. History knows these murders as the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre.



Massacre is probably too strong a word, but many married couple and others in long-term unions have killed their relationship by a death of a thousand cuts. The relationship dies not suddenly in a burst of machine gun fire, but little by little as our selfishness repeatedly wounds the relationship or marriage.



When MY needs, MY wants, MY happiness drive my actions and shape my words, I am selfish and not loving. Whether my motivation is conscious or subconscious, I am selfish -- no matter how many heart-shaped valentines or red roses I send.



We should look at our spouse or partner as someone to please and make happy, not as someone who is there to make US happy. That’s what real love is -- and it does not come easy. Christians would say it is impossible without God’s grace (1 Cor. 15:10). In any case, though, we have to work continuously to place the one we love before ourselves.



Isn’t that what we ask for in the prayer attributed to Francis of Assisi?



O Divine Master,

grant that I may not so much seek

to be consoled as to console;

to be understood, as to understand;

to be loved, as to love….


Really that’s how we make love. And the more we work at it, the better lovers we become. It’s an acquired skill. Another Saint Francis, Francis de Sales tells us that we learn to speak by speaking. We learn to study by studying. We learn to work by working. In the same way we learn to love by loving -- by repeated, unselfish acts of kindness.

I’m not talking about boxes of chocolate or bouquets of flowers. I’m talking about getting supper, washing the dishes, about picking up the dry cleaning -- or our dirty clothes. I mean proofing our partner’s term paper or club minutes. I’m talking about spontaneously doing these things because it pleases our partner not because it gives us pleasure. The lover gives without thinking about it -- or about society’s gender roles. Real lovers don’t count what they’ve done. They’re not keeping book (1 Cor. 13:5). They do it without seeking or expecting anything in return.

Speaking of society as a whole the Dalai Lama observed, “Without love we could not survive. Human beings are social creatures, and a concern for each other is the very basis of our life together.” If that is true for our world, it is even truer for our intimate relationships.

No doubt these intimate relationships are complicated. The poet W. H. Auden tells us, "The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews." This Valentine’s Day we should remember Auden’s insight. It has lots to say about the differences between romantic and lasting love.


Dan O’Rourke lives in Cassadaga, NY. His columns appear each month in the Observer, Dunkirk, NY on the second and fourth Thursday. A grandfather, Dan is a married Catholic priest. He has published "The Spirit at Your Back," a book of previous columns. To read about the book or send comments on this column visit his website http://www.danielcorourke.com/