Contents
Why the infidels don’t celebrate Valentine’s
Couple
Lovers choose to celebrate Valentine’s Day one day before (or one day after) the designated date
In one of the funniest scenes in “Love Actually,” the character played by Alan Rickman buys a necklace at a mall as a Christmas present. His wife, Emma Thompson, finds a little later the small package in her husband’s coat and smiles to herself with satisfaction: it seems that her spouse is trying to fix what she feels is missing lately. When it comes time to open the gifts and see that what she is actually receiving is a music record and not a necklace, the woman’s soul falls to her feet. And she reaches the basement when, a few hours later, she sees the happy pendant on the neck of her husband’s secretary.
This situation, a bit bizarre but not impossible, seems more likely than ever at a time like Valentine’s Day. Those people who have a extramarital affair they can be embroiled in conflict on Valentine’s Day. What do they usually do? Buying gifts for your partner and your lover? How much money do they spend? With whom do you spend the celebrated date? A study by “Ashley Madison”, a dating portal for married people, finds figures with which to define this – not so – unusual situation.
Christoph Kraemer, European responsible for the web portal, explains that one of the biggest conflicts is in the gifts. Statistics say that the budget is uneven, since about 30% more is spent on the gift of the couple than on that of the lover. Lara Ferreiro, an expert psychologist in couple relationships and sexology, gives several reasons why this phenomenon can occur. On the one hand, he explains that there are times when the guilty feeling and therefore, in order to avoid remorse, more money is allocated to the stable partner. On the other, the professional explains that the couple represents the emotional center of a person’s life and that, ultimately, is a very important value.
The study also reflects that gifts for lovers are usually lingerie or sex toys, while cheating people choose to give them one romantic dinner or jewelry. “If your lover represents the sexual world, it makes sense that the gifts are focused on it,” says the psychologist.
Premature valentine
Another habit that people who cheat on Valentine’s Day share is celebrate this day at a time other than February 14. “It is very little justifiable not being able to spend the night at home on a date like this,” says Lara Ferreiro, who explains that lovers usually meet the day before or the day after. That is why in the US, February 13 is popularly known as “Lovers’ Day.”
And does this mean that on the journey of love people forget their lovers? The data seems to support this approach, since during this day the registrations in the application aimed at people seeking an extramarital affair fell by 2019% in 30, a percentage of decrease very similar to that experienced by the number of messages sent through the app .
But, in this case, after a bit of calm comes a stronger storm, since as of February 17, the data reflected that the registrations were increasing throughout the second half of February. “It’s the Valentine’s Day effect”, Christoph Kraemer jokes and the psychologist explains it: “This day couples share a dinner, a gift … they spend time together that sometimes is not frequent, and thus they realize that perhaps their relationship not going well”.
Kraemer concludes by orbiting around the same idea: “If the romantic date with the couple does not meet the expectations that one has, the disappointment is usually significant. It seems natural then the rise in new registrations in the days after Valentine’s Day ».