The Death of Valentine's Day

There once was a time when Valentine’s Day would come and I would plan for it for weeks.  I am, after all, a compulsive planner.  I would make dinner reservations and buy stuffed animals, chocolates, flowers, balloons and a sappy love story movie.  Fast forward over 25 years of dating and marriage and I can’t even get the day off work anymore.  After I get home from work it is so late neither of us feels much like going anywhere.  When we did go out, we waited ridiculous amounts of time for poor service and late meals.  I mean, who wants to work all day and then wait 2 ½ hours for a table at a crowded restaurant?  You can’t even find places around here to take reservations.  We have at least 6 toy boxes full of stuffed animals in our basement and have given at least that many away to Goodwill over the years.  There are still chocolates from 3 years ago hidden in our bedroom.  I think we have just about every sappy love story out there now.  The balloons always got in the way when I was driving.  After about a day they would fall down and the kids would kick them around.  I still buy the flowers because my wife really looks forward to those and I buy the chocolates anyway because she still wants to know I care.  It’s not that I don’t care about Valentine’s Day anymore.  It’s just that we’re past the phase of trying to impress each other.  What’s truly important to me is to be with her.  She makes any holiday worthwhile.  In my writing I received a review some time ago stating the reader’s displeasure that there was no romance in the book and hardly any females.  (I don’t remember J.R.R. Tolkien or C. S. Lewis being criticized for that)  Before I defend the book, why does it need a love story anyway?  We are so conditioned to watching just about any kind of movie and there is a love story.  It could be a war movie, horror movie, suspense movie, mystery, action or documentary and people want to see a romance.  It doesn’t matter if the story is about two penguins or 2 vampires, the audience wants a love story and more specifically, sex.  My first book does not have either of those because they simply didn’t fit into the story at that time.  In the second book and upcoming third book there are love stories but you will never have sex scenes in my books.  I am not a prude and having 3 children I have nothing against sex.  It just has no place in my writing.  There are plenty of opportunities to fill in the blanks, as it were but I write books that my children can read and I don’t have to blush when they do so.  They are not children’s books but where is it written that adult books must have Adult Content?  Maybe I am a prude.  I just think your story should be able to stand on its own without the need of sex to keep your reader interested.