photo from themesbank.com/blog/
The article below was written by an editor from Feministing.com, a great feminist blog. It talks about showing love to the people who mean a lot to you, but is not your romantic partner. This article interested me because recently I was talking to my co-workers at the RCFP about this topic. How do we show love to people who are not our romantic partners? We suggested starting a national holiday for best friends, but then we decided that it could end badly, since most people have more than one best friend. People would be requesting a table for thirty or someone would get angry becausetheir best friend wanted to spend the day with someone else.
So then the question remains, how do you show love to those you appreciate, but is not your romantic partner? For me, I like to send random texts letting my closest friends know I miss them and love them. Or I will send a text when something random happens that makes me think of him/her- like a song on the radio, TV show or food/drink I am eating.
There are so many ways to show those you love and appreciate that you care. There does not need to be a designated holiday; it should be every day.
How do you show the love?
So obviously it’s Valentine’s Day. You’d have to be hiding in a cave, with no access to media or facebook, to be able to avoid it. And if you were in said cave, you wouldn’t be reading my blog post.
Anyways, it’s Valentine’s Day and there is a lot to be said about the many many things wrong with the holiday. But what I want to use this hook to talk about is how we show the love to people in our lives OTHER than romantic partners. The irony of Valentine’s Day, for me, is that our romantic partners are probably the people we show the most love to, most often. Think about it. If you are in a romantic relationship, chances are you express affection towards that person constantly, whether through physical displays of affection, saying I love you, or sending cute texts.
But what about the other people in your life that you love and appreciate, even if you aren’t romantically involved with them? Those relationships deserve a national holiday, so you can remember not to take your friends for granted, or even your neighbor, or the person you see on the bus.
I have to admit I borrowed this question from a board meeting I was at this weekend at the Astraea Foundation.
I answered this question by sharing that this year, I’ve tried to institute a practice of sending gratitude cards to friends whenever I want to appreciate them and their role in my life. I found some nifty ones on etsy, gathered up some stamps and away I went.
From a.favorite on EtsySo, Feministing readers, how do you show the love to the people in your life who aren’t your romantic partners?
