Valentine’s Day has become romantic love’s apocalypse now.  I really don’t know when this happened, but I know when I became aware that people were treating Valentine’s Day as a day of doom.

    About ten years ago, I was working at home and decided to head out to Wholes Food to pick up something to cook for dinner.  Not being in a romantic relationship, I was not paying attention to the particulars of the day.  But when I got to Wholes Food I knew something was going on because the parking lot was full.  It was only11:30 or so in the morning. 

    Finally I found a place to park and wandered into the store and holy smoke, the place was packed with nervous men.  The store had set up three different lines where men could buy only one thing; flowers. Looking to the front of the line, looking at a time piece, these men’s faces were filled with tension.

    I got out of there.  I headed down to Quail Ridge Books, my favorite bookstore.  And lo and behold there were more men.  This time they were standing in front of the greeting card section.  One man was beside himself, saying to one of the clerks, “Is this all you have?”  With polite tension in her voice, the clerk replied, “You understand sir that today is Valentine’s Day and people buy cards in advance.”  That didn’t help the guy; he continued to look in anguish, sweat on his brow.

    What the hell, I thought, is going on?  When did Valentine’s Day turn into a day for the wailing and gnashing of teeth? I realized that something had changed.

    Not long after I stumbled upon and read Barbara Whitehead’s book, “Why There Are No Good Men Left: The Romantic Plight of the New Single Woman.”

    Disregard the first part of the title because that is not what the book is about.  In a way, we should also disregard the second part of the title because the book is about the plight of anyone, woman or man, who is seeking a long lasting romantic relationship.  You see, in her book, Dr. Whitehead, co-director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University showed that there has been a major shift in the way society manages romantic interpersonal relationships. That shift has been from a marriage-dating-system to a relationship-dating-system.

    The marriage system was meant to bring two never-married-single people together for life-long marriage. That system had courtship expectations and rules.  Almost unnoticed by us in our everyday life, American society has moved away from that system and created a new system; the relationship-dating system.

    And how does this new system work.  Very simply, the relationship-dating system is designed to make sure people have intimate relationships. That’s the end of the sentence.  People, never-married or not, are expected to have intimate relationships, but not necessarily marriage, and certainly not life-long marriage.  In the relationship-dating system, there are no courtship expectations and rules, and break ups are expected.  I mean come on, how long can two people be expected to stay together… get real.

   No courtship expectations or rules… so no wonder that today dating motivations are all over the place. Once I understood the claim of a shift I began to discuss this idea in my general social psychology course.  To get into that discussion I ask students, “What are the goals of dating, nowadays?”  Every time I do this I get a flood of responses.  What are the goals of dating nowadays?  Here are some of the unedited responses I get:

    To have fun…                     

  For money…                     

  Out of pity…

    To learn…          To find your soulmate       

   To get help with homework…       

   To have a servant…         

  For serious reasons…        Social pressure…

  To feel better

   For something to do…       To have a servant…       

   To fit in…

   Companionship…              For gifts…                        

   To kill time     Fear of being alone…      

   To please family…             

   To acclimate to a new situation…

   To get a free meal…     To gain status…                 

   To meet people…     To gain experience…  

    To find out who you are…  To rebel against family…

   To experience interest…    To have a Valentine…   

   To get transportation…     

    To get over past relationships…

    Yikes…dating motivations are all over the place nowadays.  Remember these responses come from 200, nineteen and twenty year old college students. And marriage is not mentioned in this list. And the reason is we are living in a relationship-dating system.  That is also why people today say that marriage is not necessary for a good life.  That is also why having a baby is now disconnected from marriage.  As put by Frank Furstenberg, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania, “Marriage has become a luxury good.”

   So in the relationship-dating system which provides no clear ways to show our partners that we really care, without that context, way too much hangs on Valentine’s Day. Things are so loose now, that what were normal expectations are now extreme. Acts of love have to be overblown. If they aren’t, they are a deal breaker.  Valentine’s Day becomes our day of romantic apocalypse. 

    I am an interpersonal (social) psychologist.  So although lately I have laid out my thoughts about the neo-diversity of our time, I still spend time analyzing the dynamics of romance. I do this because it is fun.  Who doesn’t think about romance?  Who hasn’t struggled with that kind of intimate interpersonal relationship?

    But I analyze romantic relationships because it is what I am called to do as an interpersonal psychologist. Interpersonal psychology is the area of study in which social psychologists develop theoretical and practical knowledge of how interpersonal relationships work. Interpersonal psychology is based on the idea that all relationships are relationships of interdependence; that is relationships where each person depends on the other person to obtain interpersonal satisfaction.

    Nothing brings all that together like romance.  So I study and analyze the dynamics of intimate, romantic relationships because I believe that analysis and understanding is important to all our everyday lives.

    At last night’s Grammy Awards, Adele swept all of the categories in which her album was nominated. 

      When she won the Album of the Year, she said her album was about something everyone has had to deal with.  Adele said, “This record is inspired by something really normal and everyone’s been through it…a rubbish relationship.”  Indeed… indeed…

    But how is it that we go from being “…in love” to realizing we have made a terrible mistake?  What is the dark magic of relationships that leads us to go with hope and optimism into a rubbish relationship?

    Is that the most important question?  Maybe we should ask, instead, what don’t we know about relationships that we need to know to give us a chance at success?  What do we need to know to prevent us from turning our own relationships into rubbish?

   Hold on; switchback ahead… a steep, curvy one.  Let’s talk about intimate relationships; let’s talk about the dynamics of developing intimate relationships in the 21^st century.  You see… something has changed… and there is no better evidence of that than Valentine’s Day, 2012; the apocalypse-now of romance.