FEBRUARY 2025 SULLYGRAM:  One day out of 365? Are you kidding me? Like an afterthought. Valentine’s Day is almost an insult to a relationship. 1/365^th of an attitude. Like taxes on April 15^th. Marriages that have scoreboards never made sense to me. 50-50 in separate ledgers. My agenda, your agenda. Should be 100-100 and one ledger. An affirmation writ large every day with a white feather plume.    

Is there anything more perfect than to love and be loved romantically? What else can lift you to the heights of all circuits firing? Passion’s magic secret, pulsing phosphorescently with every sudden reminder in the ‘midst of pedestrian days, will keep you young forever. Marshal full senses five, say I.

Seems to be quite rare in the negotiated ethos of modern marriage. Too few shrines for inamoratas. Too few tidally locked companionships. Too few smug secrets of tender truths known only to two. Pity the loss of unblemished thrills and sweet stings of anticipation that morph but never wane. But I have to believe that in every heart there remains an inner sanctum reserved for an indelible dream of giving and receiving. Long after love is shot through the heart in the hunt of modern living, the ghost lingers, an empty chair at the banquet of hope. Inviolable. So, where exactly does romance go off the rails?

Methinks if girls are first to rehearse RSVPs for a mate-of-their-dreams, boys are last to give up that fantasy if and when they finally glimpse it. The female probing for emotional security comes from a million years of evolution’s boot camp, after all, while males strive in the tangible world where power and dominance are the inborn rules of the game. Women network in the ether; men network with muscle and bone. Great dumb beasts, men may be less likely to fixate amorously, but if they do, they are less likely to get over it. Makes you wonder which gender is really more practical when it comes to love, and which is more romantic?

Those are the archetypes, as I know them, but naturally there are infinite shades of dispersion on the bell curve. Inner woman in the man. Inner man in the woman. You may recognize your inamorata-elect reflexively, but beware the litmus test, the practiced negotiation coming at you in countless questions with multiple choice answers that nevertheless lead to true or false conclusions. There are failing grades, mediocre grades, passing grades, and ACES! But ultimately, passing your Boards is your doomed effort to make something intangible into something palpable. A diploma merely awards you an arrangement. Scholarships are contingent and deadly. Caveats aside, the good news is that the imprint of something transcendent and altruistic remains on our radars, else Valentine’s Day would have dropped off the calendar. 1/365^th beats nada.   

The only relationship negotiations that really matter are not negotiations at all. Honesty and fidelity – if they aren’t the same thing – have a single unspoken premise. If you don’t have honesty with your true inamorata, what do you have? You might survive a lot of contradictions, even ongoing infidelity if it’s balanced somehow, but you won’t survive a lack of honesty. So, here’s to all the romantic idealists on planet Earth, those unicorns who thrive on enshrinement as if it’s a secret nip of vintage from an ancient bottle. It is.

All that said, I learned a long time ago that if you think you know anything about the course of love, you know nothing. Different strokes for different folks. Years ago, I somehow became a phone confessor to an ex-student after her second marriage failed. She had no children and by her own account had never been faithful to a man for more than a few months. When she told me she was going to tie knot #3 with a virgin guy who lived with his mother and didn’t believe in pre-marital intimacy, I figured her odds were about as good as getting used to a cold speculum in a gynecologist’s office. She said they both loved the same things. Near as I could tell this included board games (2-person Parcheesi!) and going to sleep with the 9 o’clock news on in the bedroom. Last phone call I had from her years ago, she blurted out laughing that she’d never had an orgasm with any man. Far as I know she’s still married to #3 nearly a decade in – sending Christmas cards from “Mr. and Mrs.” Like Chuck Berry sang, “…goes to show you never can tell.”

Thomas "Sully" Sullivan