Love is... giving up a vice

After years of nicotine abuse, I have finally given up smoking. This has partly been inspired by love, which I guess is an appropriate tale to tell in Valentine's week. My boyfriend abhors my cigarette habit but he has been far too clever to demand that I stop. Instead, he has led by example by giving up caffeine. Somehow this prompted me, two Fridays ago, to barter a deal: "Okay, if you give up coffee for good, I'll give up fags, how's that?" His eyes lit up and he shook my hand. I backtracked desperately a few seconds later when I discovered that he wanted me to go cold turkey there and then. "Hang on, caffeine is hardly a fair comparison with nicotine; I need weeks to prepare for the shock," I bleated. "No way," he insisted. "Life without coffee is hell. Trust me."

Since then, I have been doing my best to up-end all the normal triggers that encourage me to light up, which has included me doing healthy things like taking up yoga. Only, when I brought out my ancient leggings to wear to my class, I didn't realise until too late that they had developed a split in the crotch, which was instantly mortifying enough for me to crave a ciggy. Then I opted to spend last weekend at home with my mother in Dorset, where my desire to smoke is always at its weakest. Big mistake. Mum had arranged for us to visit a mutual friend who happens to be a staunch smoker, and I sat through lunch staring at her packet of Marlboro Lights and twitching for nicotine.

In desperation, I switched our conversation to love. This friend has been visiting a shrink to help her come to terms with her husband's death and one of the texts she'd been given to peruse is a Jungian-influenced tome, Eros and Pathos; Shades of Love and Suffering. She declared I should read this, too - I suppose in deference to the pain being caused by my non-smoking.

Since my book consumption has gone up as a counterbalance to my cigarette cravings I grabbed it, but the manual hardly makes for the most inspiring reading. From what I can work out, the definition of love comes down to a mutual desire for sex, and that "love that lasts a lifetime ... is in reality so rare as practically to constitute an anomaly".

Sighing, I turned to the back to work out what treats the other Jungian texts listed had in store and was amused to find one entitled The Phallic Quest: Priapus and Masculine Inflation. This made me think of a single mother girlfriend of mine who at Christmas popped a packet of Viagra into her boyfriend's stocking to make him giggle.

"Darling!" he uttered in shock when he opened the gift at her family's house, where they spent Christmas. "What on earth would you have done if I had unwrapped my stocking in front of your mum?" She laughed and told him that not only did her mother know about it but so did all her friends and we were all longing to know the result.

The pair chose New Year's Eve to experiment, when they were in Spain. He took the pill about an hour before dinner (at the Ritz in Madrid) and my girlfriend eagerly watched for changes in his behaviour. A few minutes into the first course, she saw him flush red to the roots of his hair, but he was not being startled by any activity in his trousers - he was simply thoroughly overheating and the only swelling that was occurring was in his feet. "Huh! Don't think much of that," he huffed afterwards.

Now I am contemplating a more romantic conception of love, which is what to do on St Valentine's Day. I have gleaned that about 50 per cent of my girlfriends cannot bear the idea of going out to dinner on a night surrounded by other couples ("far too artificial") while the rest are desperate for an excuse not to cook.

Since I actually enjoy being by a stove, I considered preparing some sumptuous meal, but the only other time I have done this - years ago - it was an unmitigated disaster.

My sister and I had jointly planned a feast for our boyfriends of the time. We had prepared beetrootstained, heart-shaped jellies containing a scallop inside as a starter, oysters for the main course and laid on oodles of pink champagne, which would have been wonderful, had not one of the guys stabbed himself in the hand with a knife trying to prise open an oyster and the other contracted food poisoning.

My man and I have concluded that we shall go out for supper, and I reckon that the best Valentine's gift I can give him is a smoke-free me. Put simply, that is my definition of love - for me, my man and my son.