Retro: Did the earth move for you today? How dating has changed

Reasons seem to be due to the stress and expense of Christmas and the fact that couples are thrown together more.

However, the earth may still have moved for many people on Valentine’s Day or be a day pretty much like all the rest in the year.Most people do believe that romance is not dead although whether their partner also believes it is another matter, with a percentage thinking that it’s all soppy drivel!Either way it’s a day firmly entrenched in the calendar and one that can get you into a whole load of trouble if you forget it.Perhaps not quite as much trouble when you are elderly and have been married for a long time. There is often the feeling that you don’t have to try quite so hard.

With it having lasted so long you must be doing something right! If you do remember, being pensioners, it can be economically sensible to keep re-cycling the same cards! If you can remember where you put them after last year!Romance will always be around, but the logistics of it has changed considerably since the 1960s.

You often met the object of your affections at school, college, church or a coffee bar.

But today’s young people have more idea of what they are looking for, height, hair colour, job, and interests, by virtue of on-line shopping with dating apps. Especially during the Covid years with socialising limited!While your parents expected to vet your boyfriend for suitability, sex education by them had been pretty limited, if at all. Hence the terms of the time like ‘getting into trouble’ or ‘Having to get married’.You found more relevant advice in ‘Sex and the Single Girl’ by Helen Gurley Brown which was published in 1962.A boyfriend in the 60s was expected to be courteous. You could judge a young man by whether he held the door open for you or not!

They were expected to pay for the drinks, cinema tickets and restaurant. It would be a while before you could make him see that you weren’t wanting to emasculate him when you offered to go ‘Dutch’.It was not a good idea to let him expect a kiss on the first date. What kind of girl did he think you were? And also, not to appear too intelligent.

Advice of the day in women’s magazines was that men didn’t like clever women. It was man’s place to be the more intelligent one in the relationship!So, Valentine’s Day if you were courting, was all important and you could expect the big floral gesture. And even if you were single, it was quite common to send a card to yourself. So your friends didn’t think you were a complete loser.Of course, Valentine’s Day can also cause heartache for those who have lost a loved one and be a sad reminder of happier times. But at least they have known what love is and have their memories. As Alfred Lord Tennyson said in 1850:‘I hold it true, what’er befall.I feel it when I sorrow most.‘Tis better to have loved and lost,Than never to have loved at all!’