Whether it's a partner, friend, sibling or maybe even your pet - today is the day of the year to tell them you love them. Of course, ideally, this would be an everyday thing, but on 14 February that love comes with a card.
However, for some couples hand delivering a Valentine's Day card or rose is out of the question...
Picture the scene; you meet the love of your life, they're perfect, they even like cats as much as you do. You start to realise you're no longer going to be the single friend, you can stop replying 'no plus one' to wedding invites, and you’ll even have someone you can force to wear matching pyjamas with you at Christmas.
But then, they decide to leave the country and suddenly you’re thrust into a long-distance relationship.
So how do you navigate this? Let’s meet some people who have done, or are doing this.
Elaine and Darren did long distance at a time when there wasn't even email.
Elaine was living in America and came home for a holiday. On the first day of her two-week holiday, she met Darren at a pub in Galway.
He was tall, handsome - and Australian. He was backpacking at the time and so spent the next week or two traveling around Ireland with Elaine as they got to know each other.
Bu then it was time for Elaine to leave.
"I went back travelling and then in the December of 1996 I came home, and I thought that Aussie fella, I was attracted to him, I think I’ll give him a call," said Elaine.
That phone call led to nine months of a long-distance relationship.
"Every Sunday, we would ring each other, and the call card would last an hour, so I would have 59 minutes to talk," recalled Elaine.
She then decided she had to be with Darren and headed for Australia, moving in with him on day one.
Darren said he had no objections and he proposed to her in Australia.
"We got engaged over there, had a massive engagement party and then I said; look, why don't we go to Ireland to get married and stay there for about a year and we'll head back to Australia and settle down then," he explained.
But things changed and the couple have now been settled in Ireland for 25 years (this month).
However, despite long distance being worth it in this case, it's not on everyone's wish list when it comes to dating.
Professional matchmaker and founder of Love HQ Matchmaking, Mairéad Loughman said there are some dealbreakers that come up regularly.
"Most women want to meet a guy that's taller than them, slightly older than them, and maybe who has a bigger job than them. Whereas men like slightly smaller, slightly younger women," explained Mairéad.
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She said things like smoking and children can also be a factor when it comes to finding the one, with distance also in the mix.
"Some people are more than willing to travel. For some people long distance is their partners living in Waterford and they're from Cork and for other people it could be Asia," said Mairéad.
Even if distance is a deal breaker, sometimes it just takes one person to change their mind - Bella, whose boyfriend Ryan lives on the east coast of America, is testament to this.
While she wouldn’t recommend anyone doing long distance if they have a choice, it has offered her some unique experiences.
"I've had some fabulous trips, I went to Salem for Halloween, I went to New York, went to Cape Cod. He's just seen the outskirts of Dublin unfortunately, but we've had a fabulous time."
Bella is now excited for the next chapter, once the long distance ends soon.
"Our next step will be living together but I think if we've come through this, god knows what else we could get through," Bella said confidently.
But it's not all rainbows and butterflies, clinical psychotherapist Stephanie Regan said that she is often met with couples who are struggling with long distance where one has the children at home and resentment builds that one person is having a better time than the other.
When it comes to newer relationships, she thinks it's different.
"There are many little issues [that] can go wrong, the biggest of these...from a psychological side is the idealisation of the relationship, the feeling that you have when you meet stays with you, it doesn't really get dissipated, if you like, by the normal, you know, everyday meet-ups."
She said that if a couple are long distance from the outset, that can be a difficulty in that they don't get time to see "the warts and all".
Despite how hard it can be, some people are just suckers for punishment. Eoin and Isobel met in Ireland while both working in a school and decided to enjoy two rounds of long distance. The first came when she went to Amsterdam to do a Masters. They thought they were done until Eoin got the urge to leave Ireland.
"I had the itch to go to Vietnam but it just didn't really fall with Isobel 's work commitments, so we had another conversation but this time it was Dublin and Hanoi."
So, after another year apart in September, Isobel made the trip to Hanoi.
"We're really enjoying just living in the same space, we rented our first apartment together and it's been very nice," said Eoin.
