Valentine’s Day is a great day. Love is in the air, red chocolate, flowers and hearts, many hearts (some broken ones too).

If you have a partner and you are in a happy relationship, Valentine’s Day is a real joy, a good reason to celebrate.

If you are single not by choice or you do have a partner but struggle in your relationship, Valentine’s Day can be a sad day.

I guess after the hype of the cards and the gifts, the chocolate and the romantic dinners, each and one of us considers it a reflection day, a day to check how much we love each other and how much love there is around us. For many people, the chocolates are there to ease the sadness.

I know that talking about sadness on Valentine’s Day kills some of the fun but I think that for many people it is a sad day and we need to consider what leads people to this sadness so that we, the happy couples, won’t be eating consolation chocolate some day.

In the past year, many client couples came for coaching. Most of them already had one foot out the door of the relationships.

I think it is easy to break up. My mom used to say that it takes a long time to fill in a bucket of milk and a second to spill all of it – relationships are the same. It takes a long time to build and seconds to destroy.

People dedicate so much effort to finding love, but not as much to keep it alive. Every time a new couple comes for coaching, I hear myself asking the same questions:

• When was the last time you went out for movie?
• When was the last time you had a romantic dinner?
• When was the last time you went on a sex retreat?
• When was the last time you bought each other a gift?

When couples are in the “hunting” season, the last time was last week or maybe the week before, but when they have been together for a long time, last time was a looooooong time ago.

Having a good relationship is a question of priority. In the “Valentine” days, the priority was high so these couples made a lot of effort. There was an effort to get to know the other person, effort to look good, effort to make the other feel good, effort to compromise, effort to communicate.

Lots of effort and everyone was happy and wanted more. Why does living together for a long time change the priority so much that couples are just not willing to make the effort anymore?

I guess it is because of the temperature.

Our body’s optimum temperature is 37 degrees. This is when all the functions of the body work properly.

When the temperature drops, some systems cannot work well and we feel sick. Relationships are the same. When we cannot keep the heat, some systems stop functioning and our relationship becomes stuck and painful.

When couples flirt and put the effort, everything works well. When they stop, the temperature only drops to 36 degrees, but 3 month in 36 degrees and they go down to 35. Usually when they come for coaching, they are both freezing and down to 25 degrees of relationship heat – no sharing, no caring, no fun and little or no sex.

No wonder they want a way out.

Use this Valentine’s Day to check the temperature of your relationship and do not wait for it to be 25 degrees to do something about it.

Make a list of what needs to happen for you to be on healthy, happy, sexy 37 degrees and make all the effort in the world to achieve each and every one of them so that next year we can meet here on Valentine’s Day and declare it a happy day.

Happy Valentine’s Day!
Ronit