Valentine’s Day is upon us.

On this day, love, that feeling we all know but can’t quite describe, is turned into either a thorn or a commodity. People often either feel defensive that their relationship status isn’t showing any arrows through hearts, or annoyed they must spend money on nonsense to prove those arrows have indeed punctured more than paper.

When I was little, the ideal relationship, the one I would one day surely have too, belonged to Bo and Hope on the esteemed daytime drama Days of Our Lives. True love obviously meant insane good looks, in a world where a police officer could afford trips around the world to save his girlfriend from repeated kidnappings and bouts of insomnia. Large weddings (with large bangs for both bride and groom) were the next step.

All I needed was Jon Bon Jovi to find me in little ol’ Grundy, VA, and I’d have been set.

Many lessons were learned during these formidable years. The biggest, of course: dramatic arches and extreme circumstances are the key to a happy life.

First Comes Love...

As I grew older, I realized love was a little more, well, realistic. And while the love part might be boring at times, the romance and adventure didn’t have to be. So, having grown cultured and, thus, no longer turning to my grandmother’s soap operas for guidance in the relationship department, I now looked to more esteemed forms of popular culture: lyrics.

Obviously I didn’t need a mulleted, melodramatic partner when I could instead have a disheveled grunge god and be like Kurt and Courtney or Sid and Nancy. Tattered jeans and drug addiction produced great lyrics like “You’re the devil in disguise” or “It is now my duty to completely drain you.” Beautiful! The macabre undertones and violent poetry in couples like these was (and is) more intriguing than any group of old marrieds I’d ever met. Real or fictional, the narratives in the imagery and myth surrounding dramatic couples are not unlike pileups on the highway. We can’t help but look…and talk about later.

Those dramatic arches? Not necessary, it turns out. What you really need is a little mental deficiency coupled with decent artistic expression. That episode of The Real World: London where the girl gives her boyfriend a real pig’s heart with nails gunned through it? She knew Neil would write a song about her just as soon as his tongue grew back. Talk about leading by example.

Then Comes Marriage...

Alas, it turned out heroin addiction and a penchant for guns or knives didn’t bode well for some of the aforementioned great love stories. Who knew? Now, having depleted both television and song, knowing now that neither crises nor instability were necessary ingredients to love, I moved onto film. Surely information on how to maintain stability and mutual respect could be found in stories where people overcome obstacles like alien invasions or strict fathers, where all is resolved nicely and conveniently in 100-minute increments. I don’t care what you say, I still think Marcellus Wallace threw Tony Rocky Horror off that balcony. You don’t give foot massages to married people! Jeez.

And documentaries were just as informative, and as a bonus, they were actually true. Anyone who hasn’t seen Crazy Love needs to go to Netflix asap to brush up on a really sick story on obsession and co-dependence. “Blind me by throwing acidic lye in my face? Sure! I’ll marry you!” Then came The Dancing Outlaw. Norma’s dedication to all three of the immortal Jesco White’s personalities, with only an occasional “don’t hit me in public no more!” as mock protest, showed us all what marriage could be when one really digs in and commits. Jesco ends with, “Marriage is a wonderful thing, but you get a lot of little things with it. It’s not perfect. But they’s love in it, they’s happiness in it, but there’s also sorrow, hatred and madness in it.”

Domesticity.

Yeah, so film might not have been the best role model either. I had to close my eyes instead. Go with my own gut. And it worked out. So, this Valentine’s Day, I won’t actually be running from the cops in a stolen convertible a’la Bonnie and Clyde or Mickey and Mallory. But I’ll be channeling their rebellion and dedication. I won’t be shooting heroin while writing lyrics with my husband. But I’ll most likely hear a Nirvana song.

One thing’s for sure, though. I’ll be at Colley Cantina dancing to the punk rock of Humanoids from the Deep and enjoying what crazy couples everyone else grew up channeling but, luckily, not actually emulating. AltDaily will be hosting Tainted Love: AltDaily’s Anti-Valentine party at Colley Cantina on February 12 at 10:00 pm. There will be punk rock, a worst couple contest, prizes and drink specials.