Where's the Romance?

You ever been in a relationship in which there were big, romantic gestures? I really haven't. I don't think about it much, but I'm watching How I Met Your Mother, and it's about the Dobler/Dahmer Effect, and that there's a fine line between being romantic and being creepy. It made me think that, as a married chick, there aren't a lot of romantic gestures in my relationship. I mean the kind like this:

Remember it, ladies? I worshiped at the altar of Lloyd Dobler. Is it any wonder that, being raised with those kind of fairy tales, women are let down so often in real relationships? How could actual men actually measure up to that kind of standard? I still wish my husband was into that stuff. Once, before we were really dating, he sent me a giant balloon and roses at work, and I thought, oh yeah, that's right. He's into me. I was actually wrong. Not about the part in which he was into me, but the part in which I thought that this kind of thing would start happening more often. About a year later, we were sitting on the couch watching something scintillating like SportsCenter, and he was fiddling with some wire. When he was done with it, he handed it to me, telling me that he had made me a ring for when we got married. I still have that ring. That's how much of a sap I am. Fast-forward another year, and we were at Padre Island, sneaking along the shoreline after hours. Right before we got spotlighted and ordered back, he proposed to me. Ok, never mind. I'm starting to realize that he actually is capable of romantic gestures. I might not have it so bad after all. Then there was the first time he had to leave after we got married, and left me love notes all over the house in the places I would be sure to find them, such as the dog food canister and the bathroom drawers. He hasn't done it since, but there are lots of other things. He watches Parenthood with me because he knows that the cancer story line is hard for me to watch, but that there's no way I'm not going to watch it. He sends me texts telling me how much he loves me and how lucky he is to have me in his life, and I keep them and read them until he drives me crazy, usually the next day or two, and then I delete them and curse him, but the point is that he sent them. So, no, he's not this.

But he is this. And that's totally ok.