I need to tell you something, and I'm going to need you to not judge me for the balloon.
It was February 2006. I was newly married — we're talking September-wedding, December-positive-pregnancy-test, first-Valentine's-Day-as-a-married-couple new. My husband was working from home on a video editing project with a big payday coming, and until that check cleared, we were living lean. We'd agreed: no Valentine's celebration until the money came in.
Reasonable. Mature. Totally fine.
So there I was, driving home from my data entry job at the bank, mentally running through my dinner plan. Enchiladas. I had everything I needed. (Side note: I am a planner. I plan my plans. I plan those plans on magnetic grocery list paper stuck to the fridge and Post-it notes layered like wallpaper on my desk. Pro tip: if you make the first item on your to-do list "make a to-do list," you get to cross something off immediately. You're welcome.)
My phone rang. My husband.
"Hey, do we have any frozen broccoli and cheese?"
We did not.
"Can you stop at Kroger and grab some?"
Sure. No problem. Love you. Bye.
And then my brain — my Janette Oke, Grace Livingston Hill, While You Were Sleeping, Hallmark-movie-every-fall brain — kicked into high gear.
Oh. Oh my goodness. We said we'd wait on Valentine's Day, but he's planning to cook dinner for me anyway. He knows I'll be tired from work. He's doing something sweet. This is so romantic.
I could not walk in empty-handed.
So at Kroger, I bought the broccoli and cheese. And a balloon. And a bag of his favorite chocolates.
I walked through the door glowing. "Happy Valentine's Day!" I set the balloon and chocolates down next to his desk.
He glanced up from his computer. "Oh. Thanks." And went back to editing.
That helium balloon sat right there next to his desk for days, the bag of candy tied to its string to keep it from floating away. He ate the chocolates. He never mentioned the balloon. He just kept editing.
I blinked. "So... what are you making for dinner?"
"What do you mean?"
"The broccoli and cheese. What's the plan?"
He shrugged. "I just thought we hadn't had it in a while."
Reader. There was no plan. There was no secret romantic gesture. There was just a man who wanted a side dish.
I changed out of my work clothes. I made enchiladas. I made the broccoli and cheese. We sat down to eat and he looked at the plate and said, "This is kind of a weird combination."
I said, "You requested it."
After dinner, he went back to work. He worked until 2 a.m. I went to bed alone — the balloon still bobbing by his desk in the next room — wondering what just happened.
What I Expected
Here's the thing about growing up on love stories: they train you to expect a script.
We didn't have a TV when I was a kid, so I read. I devoured Janette Oke's prairie romances and Grace Livingston Hill's early-century love stories where men showed up, paid attention, and made grand gestures at exactly the right moment. By my twenties, I'd added the movies: Sleepless in Seattle. When Harry Met Sally. Love Potion No. 9. Speed — yes, Speed counts; don't fight me. And While You Were Sleeping, which remains perfect and I will hear no arguments.
These stories taught me that men were wired for romance. That they noticed things. That they planned.
I genuinely believed my husband would sense the moment, rise to the occasion, and sweep me off my feet with thoughtful surprises — not because I told him to, but because love naturally worked that way.
I had unrealistic expectations in a relationship I hadn't even started yet. The script was written before he ever showed up to audition.
What I Got
The broccoli and cheese incident was the first crack in the fantasy. But it wasn't the last.
A few weeks later, the Valentine's celebration still hadn't happened. The check had come in. Life had moved on. And I finally lost it — not my finest moment, but an honest one.
I don't remember exactly what I said, but I remember the tears. The frustration. The deeply embarrassing realization that I was crying about a holiday and a balloon and broccoli and cheese, and also about something much bigger that I didn't know how to name yet.
He listened. He apologized. And then — bless this man — he tried.
A few days later, I came home to a candlelit dinner. Roses on the table. Real effort.
And you know what? It didn't land.
Because in the back of my mind, I knew I'd asked for it. I'd had to explain what I needed. It wasn't spontaneous. It wasn't him reading my mind. It was him responding to my meltdown, and somehow that felt like it didn't count.
This is what unrealistic expectations do. They move the goalposts. They make even the wins feel like losses.
What Nobody Told Me
Nobody told me that men don't read minds. I know that sounds obvious — but somewhere between Janette Oke and While You Were Sleeping, I'd convinced myself that my man would be different.
Nobody told me that love looks different to different people. He showed love by working until 2 a.m. to provide. By asking for broccoli and cheese because he thought I'd be happy to have something easy to make. By trying, after the meltdown, even when he didn't fully understand what went wrong.
Nobody told me that holding onto a romantic fantasy could make me miss the actual romance happening right in front of me.
What Grace Taught Me
I've been married almost twenty years now. Not to the same man — that's a story for another post, maybe — but to the same kind of imperfect human who doesn't read minds, doesn't naturally plan grand gestures, and sometimes just wants a side dish.
And here's what I've learned:
Love is not a Hallmark movie.
Love is the printer paper.
Let me explain.
My current husband — we'll call him what I call him: my favorite — is not a romantic in the traditional sense. He forgets holidays. He doesn't buy flowers. He has never once surprised me with a candlelit dinner.
But every few months, he prints a piece of paper. Just a plain sheet from the office printer. And on it, he writes:
"I Still Do."
Then he adds a little check box, checks it, signs it, dates it, and hands it to me.
It's not roses. It's not a balloon. It's not anything the movies would write.
But it's everything.
Because what he's saying is: I'm still choosing you. Today. Again. On purpose.
That's the romance I didn't know I needed. Not the sweep-you-off-your-feet, read-your-mind, grand-gesture kind. The I'm still here and I still choose you kind.
Growing Up
The Bible says this, and I think about it often:
"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things." — 1 Corinthians 13:11 (KJV)
Unrealistic expectations in a relationship are childish things. Not stupid things — I don't mean that. But young things. Things we believed before we knew better. Things we absorbed from stories that weren't trying to teach us truth.
Growing up means putting them away. It means learning to see love as it actually is, not as we imagined it would be.
It means releasing your partner from the script they never agreed to follow.
The Invitation
If you're holding onto a balloon you bought yourself, wondering why he didn't notice — I see you.
If you're exhausted from expecting something he was never wired to give — I've been there.
If you're grieving the gap between what you thought marriage would be and what it actually is — that's real, and it's okay to name it.
But here's the grace: You don't have to stay in the gap.
You can release the fantasy. You can look at the person in front of you and ask, How does he show love? Not why doesn't he show it my way — but what is he actually doing that I might be missing?
Sometimes love is broccoli and cheese. Sometimes it's printer paper.
And sometimes, that's more than enough.
— Irene D.
Thanks for reading. If this encouraged you, I'd love for you to share it with a friend who needs it too.
— Irene D.