Celebrating Our Love on Valentine’s Day

My spouse and I have been together for nearly 23 years. Sometimes, mired in the daily grind of work and household chores and our son’s activities, it is easy to forget the sense of romance that drew us together in the first place. We still love each other, but get caught up in the practicalities needed to raise our son and put food on the table, literally and figuratively. Valentine’s Day offers us a chance to pause, to remember and celebrate our relationship, both as two adults in love and as two parents of a child we want to raise with love.

Below are a few ideas for how to reconnect with our significant others and for marking the holiday with our kids. For single parents, these ideas may be adapted to reconnect, not with a romantic partner, but with other relatives or close friends. And even if the holiday isn’t part of your heritage, there’s no reason not to do some or all of these at a time of your choosing.

Let’s start with our adult relationships. Taking the time to nurture them can also help us set good examples for our children, showing them that marriages shouldn’t be just about housework or arranging our kids’ activity schedules. They should be about doing fun and kind as well as necessary things together. If kids see marriage as nothing but a succession of household chores, then we really are destroying the institution.

Go on a date. Start by going back to basics. If you’re partnered, married, or dating, no matter how long you’ve been together, go do something without the kid(s). It doesn’t have to be a romantic candlelight dinner (though I’m personally a fan); it could be a sporting event, a shopping trip, a long walk or bike ride, or anything else that lets you be unencumbered adults for at least a few hours. This is particularly hard, I think, for new parents, but trust me—it benefits our children to learn to interact with sitters or relatives, and it benefits us by giving us the chance to decompress and recharge.

Start or renew a mutual hobby or project. I know—starting a new hobby takes time, and most of us have little enough of that. Sometimes, though, hobbies force us regularly to turn away from life’s stressors and interact over something fun, whether it’s learning to knit, training for a 5K, watching every Academy Awards Best Picture over the course of the next year, or anything else. (My spouse and I play a silly “augmented reality” game that uses the GPS on our phones to get us out and walking around our local parks.)

Read a memoir about LGBTQ parents. We don’t always have role models for being LGBTQ parents. Sometimes, reading about others’ relationships can give us perspective on our own. A few that I’ve liked in recent years include:

• Queer Rock Love, by Paige Schilt, about falling in love and starting a family with her tattooed, genderqueer, rocker spouse.
• Teaching the Cat to Sit: A Memoir, by Michelle Theall, which takes us through her Catholic upbringing, coming out during college, meeting her now-partner Jill, and adopting their son.
• Licking the Spoon: A Memoir of Food, Family, and Identity, by Candace Walsh, which begins with the stories and foods of her grandparents, and leads us through her growing up, struggling career, marriage and parenthood with a man, and finally, divorce and falling in love with a woman.
• Stuck in the Middle with You: A Memoir of Parenting in Three Genders, by Jennifer Finney Boylan, explores Boylan’s experiences as a mother, a father, and in between, and the challenges and triumphs she, her wife, and their two sons experienced during her gender transition.
• Mommy Man: How I Went from Mild-Mannered Geek to Gay Superdad, by Jerry Mahoney,with sharp writing and smart humor that shows us two men pursuing parenthood through gestational surrogacy.
• Does This Baby Make Me Look Straight?: Confessions of a Gay Dad, by Dan Bucatinsky, a hysterical romp through his children’s first few years as he seeks to make sense of parenthood and the personal transformations that came with adopting a girl and a boy.

And two ideas to bring the whole family together:

Bake something as a family. Try a tasty project to help convey that love is sweet. I have a go-to chocolate fudge cake recipe that always puts in an appearance this time of year. Peanut butter buckeyes (balls of sweetened peanut butter dipped in chocolate) are also a simple favorite to do with kids. (Google it and you’ll find many nearly identical recipes.) If you have nut allergies in your household, try dipping marshmallows in melted chocolate and then in crushed candies of your choice.

Give for love. The word “charity” derives from the Latin caritas, meaning “dearness” or “love.” Start a family tradition of giving to a charity on this holiday (whatever makes sense for your budget) to show your love for your community or your world. Consider organizations that work to strengthen families, find homes for animals, or in some other way help to promote love.

“Love is love” has long been a slogan for our movement. Let’s remember to nourish it.