Valentine’s Day has come and gone for another year, a day some see as a tacky commercial thing, but others regard it as a wonderful romantic occasion. 

The latter group can be divided too, between those whose priorities are romantic love poems, a fancy meal and lots of reminiscing of great times together, and those who can’t wait to head for the bedroom and try out some fun and kinky new sex toys.

However, sex toys are not just for February 14th, and that may be especially true if your own Valentine’s Day did not go to plan.

There are plenty of common or garden reasons why this may be. Perhaps you were distracted by a family emergency, a sudden plumbing calamity, or one of you had the flu. 

For some, it could be that all the romantic or sexy plans were in place, but something went terribly wrong. There are many grim (or amusing, depending on if it happened to you) tales out there. 

Examples include cases of romantic recipes that ended up looking nothing like the picture in the cookbook, but there have been far worse than that.

There was the case of a man who asked his girlfriend where she was on Valentine’s Day. At work, she said. So he turned up to her workplace with some flowers…only to discover she had lied; she hadn’t come into work after all, leaving him bereft and betrayed by a charlatan.

Another flowery disaster included someone waking up with her boyfriend to discover her ex had left flowers on her car.

If you have kids, getting a bit of free time away from them for some private bedroom fun can often be a challenge, although you may make special arrangements for February 14th.

However, any such ideas went out of the window in the case of one mother, whose son chose Valentine’s Day to do a ‘magic disappearing coin trick’, which led to a trip to A&E where an X-ray found exactly where it was.

Calamities and mishaps of this kind can happen at any time, but it’s worse if it occurs on a day you have set aside for some extra fun.

However, just as dogs are not for Christmas, so a bit of extra fun with sex toys is not just for Valentine’s Day. After all, if for any reason you missed out this year, you don’t want to wait for mid-February to roll around again, do you?

Instead, you can focus on simply enjoying using these toys without it having to be a particularly special occasion, just as you normally would with sex.

Of course, there is an argument that Valentine’s Day, for all its commercial tat, does have its place as a means of getting well-established couples to push the boat out a bit for their other half and not take things for granted.

That may be a very fair argument, but will a box of chocolates and a card cut it anyway? If you really want to spice things up and break away from the norm, using toys to change what might have become a very formulaic bedroom routine could be a much more effective and enjoyable way of doing it.