Hearts & Flowers...Or Huffs & Frustration?

Perhaps you need to talk – and the experts at Relate Mid Thames & Buckinghamshire have some clues to love mismatches, Sally Stevens discovers

- Sally Stevens

THE WONDERFUL gift of love will be celebrated on Wednesday, 14 February – Valentine’s Day - a festival of romance, passion, hearts and flowers, wrapped up in bows and presented with red roses and sentiment-filled cards.

But the day of the year dedicated to Cupid can also be spiked with envy and resentment, feelings of neglect and disappointment, if our romantic expectations are not met by the love of our life.

While our relationship might be the perfect match – our expectations can be a total mismatch and that can send those cute Cupids crashing to the ground.

Relate Mid Thames & Buckinghamshire (Relate MTB) counsellors have discovered that our expectations are shaped from an early age by the closest adult relationships around us, usually our parents, but also extending to parents of our childhood friends or our grandparents. Discussing how our other half’s mum and dad treated each other and reacted to each other’s behaviour can shed light on seemingly unfathomable resentments that undermine our relationships, often for many years.

If your partner’s mum thought Valentine’s Day was over-commercialised, and that soppy cards and flowers that wilt within a few days were a waste of money, yet your mum was showered with chocolates, romantic dinner dates and loving gifts every 14th of February, then you could probably do with some communication support.

Local charity Relate MTB has been providing high quality relationship advice, regardless of people’s ability to pay, across our communities for more than 50 years and last year delivered more than 4,600 hours of counselling to nearly 2,000 people.