Man, I gotta tell ya, when I first saw that headline—”How Can Virgos Maximize Their Romance This Holiday Season?”—my immediate, automatic Virgo reaction was to roll my eyes. Romance? Maximize? That sounds messy and inefficient. I’m a planner. I optimize spreadsheets, not feelings. I always figured my better half, J, was okay with the practical side of things. We’re comfortable.
That comfort, though, is the reason I even started this whole practice. About three weeks ago, I went big on my annual early holiday shopping. My gift to J? A top-of-the-line, self-emptying robot vacuum. Practical, high-tech, saves time—a perfect gift, in my book. J looked at it, smiled the way you smile when you are trying not to cry, and then said, “You know, the last romantic thing you got me was that industrial-sized container of dishwasher pods.”
I freaked out. Not visibly, of course, but internally. My entire system registered a critical failure. I had failed the “Relationship Efficiency” metric. So, I did what any self-respecting, over-analyzing Virgo does: I went straight to the data. I pulled up the horoscope for December and isolated the three core pieces of “advice” that seemed actionable. I wasn’t going to trust fuzzy feelings; I was going to run an experiment and document the results.
The Three-Part Practical Romance Protocol
I broke down the advice into three distinct and measurable tasks. I wasn’t going to fail again because of poor planning. I opened a new document on my laptop, title “Operation: Stop Gifting Cleaning Supplies,” and wrote out the protocol.
- Phase 1: The Daily Non-Practical Compliment Drill. The horoscope said, “Express admiration daily.” My natural inclination is to compliment things like punctuality or a perfectly organized spice rack. The advice specifically said non-practical. I scheduled a reminder alarm on my phone for 7:30 PM every night.
- Phase 2: The Spontaneous Outing Terror Test. It was vague: “Embrace spontaneity.” This is my anti-thesis. To prepare, I scouted three potential back-up locations—an emergency theater, a decent-rated pizza joint, a nearby park—just in case J wanted to go somewhere I hadn’t already budgeted/researched. I committed to ignoring the back-ups until the absolute last second.
- Phase 3: The Gratitude Jar Implementation. This was the easiest, the one I felt most comfortable executing. It involved materials, routine, and documentation. We were supposed to write things we appreciated about the other person and put them in a jar.
Execution and Messy Results
I jump-started the process with Phase 3 first—a solid foundation. I drove to the craft store and bought a standard large mason jar. I cut hundreds of small, uniform slips of paper and found a set of colored pens. When J got home, I introduced the jar, explaining that it was a system for us to track positive metrics. J just laughed and wrote the first note: “I love that you cut the paper perfectly straight.” See? Validation!
Phase 1 was a struggle. The first night, the alarm went off, and I froze up. I felt foolish. I went through a mental list of acceptable non-practical compliments. I ended up saying, “Your voice is nice when you hum.” It was clumsy. The second night, I pushed myself harder and said, “I like the way you look at me when I talk about my quarterly reports.” J squinted, then smiled one of those big smiles. I logged the response as “Positive Reinforcement Detected.”
Then came the big one: Phase 2. Saturday morning, I woke up early and re-checked the weather forecast for maximum efficiency. Then, I slammed my laptop shut. I grabbed J by the hand and just walked out the door. My entire internal clock was screaming: “Where are the directions? Did you check the parking situation? Is this efficient?” I fought the urge to check my phone for the backup list. We ended up driving aimlessly and found a tiny street market selling artisanal pickles and weird knitted hats. I bought a hat. It was ridiculous.
I returned home that evening and looked at my logs. The spontaneous outing, the one that broke every single one of my rules, was the one that J kept referencing. “That silly hat,” J said. The compliments, which felt like scheduled performance reviews to me, were becoming routine and losing that initial awkwardness—they were actually starting to feel natural. The jar is filling up nicely, but it’s the unplanned chaos that the horoscope implicitly pushed me toward that actually moved the needle on the romance metric. Turns out, maximizing romance isn’t about perfecting the schedule; it’s about messing it up once in a while. And that, I guess, is something even a Virgo can optimize for, eventually.
