Nicole A Gili BCPA
BCPA | Published Author | IAOTH Member |Reiki Master | Internationally Certified Master Coach |Master Healer of Alternative Therapies & Natural Medicine |NLP & Hypnosis Practitioner | Forensic Investigator | Paralega
Valentine’s Day is built on a fascinating paradox: we commemorate romance by severing flowers from their life source, watching them slowly suffocate in vases, and call it devotion. The Origin Story Nobody Mentions:
Valentine’s Day honors Saint Valentine, a Christian priest in third-century Rome who was imprisoned and executed on February 14th for performing marriages for soldiers who were forbidden to wed.
Emperor Claudius II believed unmarried men made better soldiers: fewer emotional ties, more battlefield focus.
Valentine disobeyed the emperor. As a result, he was arrested, condemned, and beheaded.
Centuries later, greeting card companies and florists transformed a story about defying authority into a billion-dollar industry.
We celebrate this martyrdom by purchasing dying flowers at inflated prices and delivering their slow death as tokens of affection.
🌹The Morbid Ritual of Giving Roses
We cut roses at the stem, not the root, so technically the plant survives, but the individual flower? Dead. Severed from its life source. By placing it in water with plant food, it’s basically kept on life support so it can look pretty while it dies over 5-7 days.
And we’ve convinced ourselves this is romantic.
The metaphor writes itself.
Roses have thorns, and we give people something beautiful that can hurt them if they’re not careful.
We spend hundreds on something designed to decay, wrap it in cellophane, and hand it to someone on a culturally mandated date because commercialism and societal pressure have convinced us this is how to prove you care.
Many people spend the other 364 days going through the motions, often feeling disconnected, yet we perform love on February 14th by dropping hundreds on dinner, jewelry, and roses.
Sometimes it’s just to avoid conflict, or worse, to impress someone who might not even be interested.
Here’s Where It Gets Interesting: What If We Changed The Plant?
Personally, I’ve never been a big fan of roses. I much prefer potted plants over freshly cut flowers, though I’ll admit I lack a “green thumb” and tend to be cautious about which ones I bring home.
But here’s what I’ve learned: some plants don’t just survive with minimal care; they actually thrive with it.
They don’t need constant attention, won’t wilt if you’re not hovering, and don’t measure your worth by how often you remember to water them.
Sound familiar?
These are the plants that mirror what healthy relationships actually look like:
Snake plants (Sansevieria trifasciata, also hilariously called mother-in-law’s tongue)
Are damn near indestructible. You can forget to water them for weeks, put them in a dark corner, ignore their existence entirely, and they just keep growing. They actually get healthier when you stop overwatering them, often thriving on benign neglect.
In relationships, this is called giving someone space to breathe. Trusting that the foundation is strong enough to withstand distance, busy schedules, or just needing time apart without spiraling into insecurity.
Pothos (Epipremnum aureum)
A trailing vine that will survive in an office with fluorescent lights and sporadic attention. You could leave for vacation, forget it exists, come back, and it’s somehow longer.
Similar to long-distance relationships: when both people have their own lives and don’t need to be joined at the hip to feel connected, they tend to grow stronger.
ZZ plants (Zamioculcas zamiifolia)
Evolutionarily designed to survive drought by storing water in their rhizomes. You could go a month without watering, and they’ll just shrug it off.
This is what healthy relationships look like when life gets chaotic, when someone’s in a busy season at work, dealing with family obligations, or just needs to recharge.
The relationship doesn’t collapse because you weren’t constantly tending to it. It holds its own.
Succulents (like Echeveria or jade plant, Crassula ovata)
These plants built an entire biological strategy: “store resources, expect nothing, survive anyway.” They’re designed for resilience.
Similar to individual autonomy within partnership. You’re not responsible for keeping the other person alive. Both partners show up whole and build something together without codependency.
All of these plants symbolize building something resilient that doesn’t collapse the moment you’re not performing. They represent building trust while creating breathing room, and not confusing proximity with connection.
Performative vs. Sustainable
Roses are expensive, showy, thorny, dead within a week, and require proof of love on a socially scheduled date.
Snake plants are low-maintenance, resilient, alive in five years, and don’t need you to prove anything.
One requires constant performance.
The other just exists and grows anyway.
Real relationships aren’t built on $100 bouquets and reservation anxiety. They’re built on consistency, honesty, space to breathe, and not needing a calendar to remind you to show up.
Valentine’s Day doesn’t create intimacy.
It monetizes the appearance of it.
And maybe the real irony is this:
● We give people dying things covered in thorns and call it love.
● Martyrdom is celebrated by participating in a global commodities market dressed up as romance.
● We’ve confused scarcity with value, performance with depth, and scheduled gestures with actual connection.
This Valentine’s Day, maybe skip the roses.
Build something that doesn’t require killing things, or performing on demand, to prove it matters.
February 14th, someone will spend hundreds on roses that die in a week, while someone else will spend $20 on a snake plant that outlives the relationship.
Guess which one we’ve been taught to call romantic?
Be a snake plant person in a rose economy.
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