What She Really Wants On Valentine’s Day

She wants you to stop worrying about fancy dinner reservations and pretty flowers and expensive chocolates. Sure, those things are nice, but at the end of the day, she’d rather sit on the couch with you and order cheap Chinese takeout. She wants to spend the evening laughing at a horribly bad movie and eating ice cream straight out of the container and basking in how much better this is than sitting in a fancy restaurant and wishing she wasn’t wearing an uncomfortable dress.

There will be enough photos on Instagram of rooftop dinner views and pink-colored cocktails and giant bouquets of flowers. But what would make her feel most happy and most like herself is to put on her favorite pair of sweatpants and have you do the same, and to know that this is what is so great about having another person in your life. Not the photo ops or the elaborate nights out or the #relationshipgoals hashtag on Instagram – but the ability to relax and goof off and feel completely at ease with yourself and with them.

She wants you to stop asking if she wants flowers or jewelry or some other kind of gift. She’d rather you ask her about her goals, her fears, or even just how her day was today. Did work go okay? How was the presentation? Are you feeling more comfortable around the new boss? 

She just wants to be around you, to relax with you, to laugh with you. She wants to just spend another night with the two of you talking to each other. Giving each other advice, sharing worries, encouraging one another, admitting that one thing you’re scared about that you’d never admit to anyone else. That’s what she wants. To forget about all the pink hearts and the cards and the endless amount of trinkets that companies are trying to profit off of at this time, and to instead just enjoy being together and feeling so close to another person that all you need is them and a cozy night in and maybe a little bit of wine.

She doesn’t want the things people tell you you’re supposed to want in a relationship. She’s already been down that road. She’s seen enough and experienced enough to know what matters to her and what doesn’t – what she was told is supposed to make her happy in a relationship and what actually does make her happy in a relationship.

What she wants, at the end of the day, is just you. No gimmicks, no expectations to live up to, no checklist to follow about how Valentine’s Day is ‘supposed to be done.’ She just wants to be a person sitting on a couch with another person, feeling happy and relaxed and joyful and silly and like she is the epitome of content. Just do that. Just be you, and let her be her.