Most of the love stories we grew up with end at “happily ever after.” The music swells, the couple kisses, and the screen fades to black. We rarely see what comes next: the ordinary Tuesdays, the missed signals, the quiet misunderstandings, and the steady work of learning how to reach each other again and again.
Valentine’s Day has a way of dropping us right into that unwritten part. There are plans and gestures meant to make love obvious. But many couples move through the day feeling strangely flat. Or tense. Or disappointed in ways that they can’t quite articulate.
Usually, that isn’t because love is missing…it’s because our particular expressions of love aren’t landing.
In couples work, I see this all the time: People can be deeply loved and still feel alone inside their relationship. There is a difference between being loved and feeling loved. When those two don’t line up, couples tend to assume the answer is effort. We need to try harder. Do more. More date nights. More gestures. More I love you’s. More, more, more when bandwidth is likely already stretched to the max. But most couples don’t need more love, they just need the love to be received.
The issue isn’t volume. It’s translation.
What helps one person feel loved may barely register for another, not because either partner is wrong, but because people are wired differently. For some people, love is words: reassurance, hearing that they are cared for, or being remembered. For others, it’s follow-through, shared responsibility, or attuned presence. And for many couples, what used to work may stop working during certain seasons: parenting, grief, burnout, or long stretches of survival mode.
This is how couples end up saying things like: “I know you love me, but I still feel alone” and “I’m doing everything I can, and it doesn’t seem to reach you.” These aren’t signs of failure. They are signals directing our attention to an area where greater connection is possible.
Valentine’s Day can make this harder. Expectations rise, comparison sneaks in, and there’s often very little space to talk about what actually feels supportive anymore. If there’s already some emotional distance, the pressure to feel loved on a specific day can widen that gap. But what shows up as irritation or withdrawal is usually something more vulnerable underneath. We all want to matter deeply to our partners, and our nervous systems crave the security of really feeling how much we matter.
Instead of asking, “Why doesn’t Valentine’s Day feel right?” a more useful question might be:
“What helps me feel loved right now, and have I asked what helps my partner feel loved, too?” It’s not about getting it right or keeping score. It’s about staying curious. About noticing where love is present but not quite translating and being willing to slow down and look at that together. In couples therapy, that often means creating space to name where partners feel aligned and where they don’t, sometimes with the help of structured tools that make those patterns easier to see and talk about without blame. If Valentine’s Day brings up mixed feelings, it doesn’t mean your relationship is broken. It may simply be that your connection is asking for a different kind of attention.
Love doesn’t disappear when it’s misunderstood.
It waits.
It waits for slower conversations. It waits for understanding. It waits for partners willing to turn toward each other with curiosity instead of criticism.
And maybe that’s what “happily ever after” really is, after all: not a paradise we ever reach but the security of knowing we are always invited to turn toward each other, again and again.
Insights Therapist Intern