How? Romantic?

“The reason you have to write columns for a living is because you’re not equipped to run a dating agency,” the Cats’ Father said to me apropos of something or the other. The Cats’ Father thinks I’m not romantic. Or, more accurately, he thinks my sense of romance is warped.

Context is everything. He came across an article trying to make museums sound like mini honeymoon getaways. I thought that sounded lovely. He cited one example featuring mainly mummified remains. I thought that sounded lovely.

And so he said what he said. Game. On.

Why indeed should the Cats’ Father think other than that I lack any sense of romance? Am I not the same woman who fails to see a John Wick marathon as an act of seduction? Do I not miss the tender hints offered by the gift of oven mitts? If I do not wish to join him on walks up hills in the mid-afternoon tropical heat, am I not spurning his amorous advances?

Also, I don’t have a career in dating services because what even is that? Did he slip and hit his head on the 1980s?

While I understand all of that may be taken care of by apps now, the truth is I know as much about the apps as I know about dating agencies.

True romantic gestures are subjective, just like romance itself. They should be personal, idiosyncratic, they should be – I believe – in every way wrapped around a person’s personness. So the test of a romantic nod is really about how well you know someone.

Let’s get flowers out of the way. Flowers are a go-to gift. I’ve heard of men who find out after 20 years of marriage that their wives hate flowers. I know women who see cut flowers as corpses in a vase. And others who just find them a nuisance because of all the care they need to keep them vibrant past day one.

Chocolates, cookies, fancy-sugary everything? Thanks so much for killing her diet. Did you even notice how she’d been eating these past five months. No? Probably not. But someone at your office told you they saw an ad for these great homemade truffles and you thought…No, you didn’t think.

Dear men, this is not all about your offences. Often a woman thinks you don’t need any sign of romance other than her acquisition of new inner-wear made of string. Which she will wear. She will feel good about herself. She will think she made the effort and that’s your gift.

Or she will do the food and sweets too. There goes your diet. No, she didn’t notice you were trying so much harder with the no-carbs and the gym either.

This Christmas I wanted to see the new Nosferatu. The Cats’ Father was having none of it. Too ghastly. I don’t think it is. It’s not something he’s fundamentally afraid of. It was just not Christmas. I won’t bother to bring it up the next time I think it’s date night. Or February 14.

We are all so wonderfully different. For me, that’s always been the starry-eyed part of falling in love with someone new. When I was young and all the world’s books still lay ahead of me, a lovely boy shared so many books with me I couldn’t keep up and had to beg him to stop.

He switched to music and I wondered briefly if he loved me.

He did not. But he saw me. He understood who I was.

Romance may come out of a heart-shaped box, but if you know your person, it may also be in a kayak or on a road trip to find the best roast pork in the country. I think whatever makes up the romantic part of me is made of waterfalls and oceans and rivers.

I think everyone’s romantic self is similar. Not the inner mermaid, but the things that make us feel most alive – and yes – passionate, is our romantic sensibility.

Mix-tapes, reading aloud, tyre swings. Oh dear. Am I at my most romantic when I’m alone?

We can’t blame people for getting it wrong if we don’t know what that is for ourselves. And how much time do we spend trying to understand that? Isn’t the default setting the one in which we say our beloved should know us well enough to figure it out?

Oh dear part 2: he’s right, all this lecturing is hardly romantic.

This is why no one wants to watch movies with me.