Thoughts on a day just passed

Specifically, St Valentine's Day, which ended around an hour ago as I started typing this.

For the record: I'm currently single, and have never been partnered at the same time as it being Valentine's Day; but the references to my own behaviour are based on how I think, feel and act when I am in a relationship.

Valentine's Day to me is one of those "meh" kind of things where I can't see what the fuss is about either for or against it. The whole "Occupy Valentine's Day" thing really passed me by because I couldn't quite work out what the point of it was. Was it saying "Let's not have a special day to celebrate love" or was it saying "Love - you're doing it wrongly" or perhaps, "Love - you're marketing it wrongly"? I suppose some people would claim that the message was meant to be "Love - stop telling us we're doing it wrongly", but that wasn't what came across, and I've never really seen Valentine's Day as presenting one particular form of loving relationship over another - at least, no more than any other fragment of popular culture does, anyway.

But that's not what I wanted to talk about. Tangentially, I got onto thinking about it because of seeing the Occupy Valentine's Day thing and a train of thought led me first to wonder why people would claim the holiday is invented to sell cards, and to promote rigid gender roles, when I'm sure I remember reading somewhere that it started out as a pagan festival in Ancient Rome that was a day of gender role reversal - specifically, it was the day when women could make marriage proposals to men instead of vice versa.

From there, I got to thinking more generally about Valentine's Day and in general about romantic gestures. And the thought I pondered specifically, before sauntering past and then doing a cartoon-style brake-screech and rewind, was this: "I quite like having a specific day where I can do something extra-specially nice for a partner."

The sauntering past was, "I like doing special, nice, things for a partner in general, but making a special show of it once a year seems good."

The screeching brakes and rewind was, "Wait a minute: why is this about doing something nice instead of having something nice done for me?"

The thought underlying that question was not selfishness, but rather, gender roles. Somewhere deep in my internalised sense of my role in a relationship is the idea that I am the provider of Good Things. Specifically, that because I am male-identified, the onus is on me to plan the extra-special day out or the super-spectacular romantic gift. And the thing is, that's internalised so well that I genuinely feel pleasure at making that sort of gesture. I like to give gifts, or make a gesture, or take my partner out somewhere special. Part of that, I think, is that I like to make people happy in general, and I like making plans and seeing them come to fruition. But part of it is definitely because I see it as my role to do the romantic gesture. When I thought about Valentine's Day, the idea of receiving the gift/gesture/special outing never even occurred to me until I paused to think about it in detail. At which point - screeching brakes, rewind, "let's look at that again in slow motion".

Some people, I am sure, will say, "Why wait for a special day to do something special for someone special?" and the answer to that is that I live on a budget, and I am used to thinking of things in terms of the budget for a week, or a month, or a year. So there's going to be a normal, every week, budget that allows for a certain level of doing nice things and romantic gestures. But if there's a special day (such as 14th February) that I can see coming, I can plan ahead and create a special budget to make something extra-special happen on that day. If there's no such special day, such that I would have to come up with a deadline or schedule on my own, it's much more likely that I'll stick to the usual routine and not quite get around to planning the super-big thing. That's how that works for me, anyway. (But, once again, I am digressing...)

The question that followed from all that was, "Okay, how would I feel if a partner turned things around and made some fabulous plans for romantic gestures of her own?"

The truth is that I found it really hard even picturing what that gesture would be. Initially, the only images that came to mind were to do with particular sexual favours, which didn't feel right because sex wouldn't be a super-duper thing like that (I mean, it is super-duper, but it wouldn't be something unusual or extra-special as a gift). That was very frustrating and annoying because how deeply ingrained does that mean the gender roles are in my mind? It also made the thought experiment hard to complete. I worked my way around it, by thinking of things that I would do as a super-special thing and then thought of what the romantic situation where I was receiving those things would be.

Here's the answer I reached: I think I would be grateful, but I would feel anxious and out of my comfort zone. Anything done as "a surprise" is likely to make me more unnerved and cross than romantically minded, so let's give her the wit to let me know in advance she was planning something big (although the details could be a surprise, I'd want to know roughly what sort of a thing). Even so, unless she'd done a lot of planning to set me at ease beforehand, I'm unlikely to be happy.

Of course, that left me with one more question, which was this: "Given that it could be possible to plan a successful romantic Valentine's Day extra-special thing for me, what would the key elements be?"

Three things I think are the keys to this. They are flexibility, food and clothes.

Flexible because I hate feeling pushed into things. Plan a wonderful sequence of events in an evening, and chances are I'll want to get off somewhere and go home. Let me feel like there's plenty of opportunities to get out, and chances are I'll stay for the ride you've planned. So, a back-up plan is good. Ease me into the plans instead of springing them on me is a good idea as well. I'll explain why that's important later.

Food because I like to plan my meals so I need to know that you've thought about what you're doing about it if I'm not. You'll have looked at the menu or equivalent for where we're going and you'll know that there's at least one thing I'm going to love. Setting is likely to help but don't overdo it (remember the whole "give me chances to bug out and it'll go better" thing).

Clothes because this is how you get me into the mood. I may or may not have planned my wardrobe in advance for the special day, or I may just have done a poor job of planning it. To make the special into the extra-special, you've got me new clothes that are fancier than everyday stuff, but appropriate for wherever you want to take me. Make sure it's something that feels special somehow, out of the ordinary. Don't make me be smart, make me elegant or showy. This is what sums it all up: let me be a man, but let me feel girlie about it - the reason you'd need to ease me into the evening is that I need to be able to shed the male skin and slip into my girlie mode before it works properly. (Alternatively, get me as girlie as possible and let me be girlie, and then take me to a CD/trans ball, because that would fulfil a dream for me!) One of my favourite things about Strictly Come Dancing is the costumes. I love the finery the men get to wear (I'd love to have version of the women's costumes as well to wear, but anyway). You don't have to get me that fancy - as long as I can feel special but appropriate for the venue, I'll be happy. But the thing is, dress me up fancy and in a way that you're going to respond well to, and that will help me feel romantic and special and loved.

Now, I'm a BDSM Dominant, so all the above advice sounds odd: it's surrendering control when normally I like to have control. This is one of those things where you get multiple layers of control: while a partner organising such an event and giving me something special to wear, planning where we'll go, and s on, seems to have the control over the evening, as already noted, I need to have the option to pull out if I feel the need to do so (having a good, comfortable, back-up plan is helpful; I might have a plan or two of my own, too). Also, just because my partner takes me somewhere and dresses me up, once she's chosen these things, the interactions while we're out can still be me in control (there's also some nice D/s role stuff to play with around being the aristocrat having his servant dress him) so I retain my role, even though my partner set the overall shape of the evening.

***

The fact that I talk about slipping into a girlie mode in the above description is interesting, and again talks to the gendered identification hat I feel that these things have. I like to feel girlie (it's my "Sucha" gender identity, after a girlfriend called me "such a girl"), and it doesn't always have to do with being pampered or romanced. To some extent the "girlieness" might not be to do with the more passive role but just because Sucha is the side of me that gets most excited about the clothes and finery and stuff, so letting me be "girlie" about man clothes gets me into an excited and desired emotional level that feels romantic and sets a romantic mood for what follows.

Even so, it still seems troubling that to receive would require accessing that level of myself, whereas giving seems rooted in my sense of my maleness.