LONDON (AP) — Love and bacon hovered in the air of the Smalley house one sunny morning when Annie, 7, came to breakfast.
A “baconaholic,” according to her father, Annie spied the last remaining strips of the intoxicating salty meat on a plate. She could easily have inhaled them all. But incoming was Annie's sister, Murphy, 16, another bacon devotee. Annie paused and decided to offer one strip of crispy goodness to her sister. “Dad,” she declared, "“I just laid down my life for Murphy.”
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A Valentine heart cushion is seen at a grocery store in Buffalo Grove, Ill., Monday, Feb. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)
FILE - A man walks holding flowers and balloons on Valentine's Day, Friday, Feb. 14, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki, File)
Colombia's Ambassador in the United States Daniel García-Peña, right, hands out flowers from Colombia to pedestrians outside the Longworth House Office Building ahead of Valentine's Day, as a symbol of the close partnership between Colombia and the United States, Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Valentine's day Plush bears are displayed at a retail store in Lincolnshire, Ill., Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)
FILE - A couple share a tender moment near a flower market celebrating International Women's Day in Tbilisi, Georgia, March 8, 2022. (AP Photo/Shakh Aivazov, File)
Perhaps, Greg Smalley reminded his daughter, the pig had sacrificed more. But what struck him was the choice. The sisters had a history of generosity toward each other, but Annie had given up something important — a massive understatement for any bacon lover — for Murphy's delight. “Love," Smalley said by email, "is built on small, daily sacrifices that quietly say, 'You matter.'”
In doing so, Annie arguably had gotten the love part right — a universal goal that's been sought and debated across borders, politics and religions for as long as people have been writing things down.
Ahead of Valentine's Day 2026, with the card and chocolate industries eager to help, loving someone well — a romantic partner, a parent, a child, a pet and especially yourself — can seem as perplexing as ever. It depends on what you want, and don't, as well as what others want from you — now and in five minutes, relentlessly.
Across traditions and philosophies, love is generally defined as an ongoing moral choice that requires truthfulness and accountability. What it's not, those texts widely say: controlling, unconditional or abusive.
Aristotle wrote that to love, a person “wishes and does what is good, or seems to, for the sake of his friend.” St. Thomas Aquinas taught that, “to love is to will the good of the other.” The Old Testament includes a famous directive, translated roughly: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
“Love,” wrote the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader, “can be defined as a wish that others be happy.”
It's all pretty lofty-sounding, so The Associated Press asked people around the world how they got love part right in real, contemporary life. Here's what they said.
“Personally, I love gift-giving,” said Ally Fernandez of Las Vegas, a seamstress. “I make a lot of my items, and I love making something special and like custom to my person, and I do that for pretty much everybody."
For her husband, Fernandez said she did “some really cool, patchwork...It's just so unexpected when you get something that's handmade like that.”
Her husband, meanwhile, has paid close enough attention to know she loves surprises. One recent date night, he took her to Area15, an immersive entertainment experience in Las Vegas.
“You walk through it...and you can interact with all the things around you," she recalled. “I love things like that, like just things that are different and artsy.”
Back home in Budapest, Hungary, there are no Sephora stores. But there are multiples in Paris. So on a recent visit to the French capital, Lili Henzel, 25, couldn't stay away from the cosmetics giant — and her husband, Bulcsu Alkay, 23, went along for the ride. Again. And again.
“Yesterday, we went to Sephora for five times," Henzel said in an interview. “It’s not fun for him, obviously, so I appreciate that a lot.”
Alkay took it with good humor. “I guess it’s my second home, I would say,” he said. Turning to his wife, he empathized. “Because you have so much at Sephora and we don’t have it at home.”
They displayed admirable honesty, appreciation and clear communication.
“I love makeup, so we had to buy a lot of it,” Henzel explained.
“I’m not really interested in that kind of shopping,” Alkay said.
Replied Henzel: "Thanks again for that.”
Luis Mitre of Los Angeles says that “love is the most wonderful thing.” He tries to express how he feels to people, but his dogs seem to know automatically.
That might be because he takes them wherever he goes, even on travel. “They sense when you're sad, when you're happy, even when people don't," said Mitre, who also lives in Las Vegas, where he spoke to the AP. “I think they show their love in unexpected ways every single day."
Claudia Verdun and Francarlos Betancourt, French visitors to Rome's romantic Trevi Fountain, took a quick selfie and kissed — then talked about love.
“For me, it is a daily test," Verdun said. "Little attentions, respect, care for the other, to believe in the other pushing, for the best for him. I think that is important.”
Added Betancourt, love is “to help each other with some things, to always be together, starting with your differences — you have to love each other.
Yi Yi, a Beijing resident, thinks “no relationship is closer than that with oneself."
“I think for many people, the most important is that you should really love yourself, fully accept yourself and accept your own vulnerability and shortcomings,” Yi said. “I think these are the most important aspects of love for oneself.”
“What we do," said Joel Stimpfig, 18, who visited Paris from Madrid, “is that we always have good communication and when we’re having a bad day, we always have a little moment to talk and discuss the relationship.”
Anke Verbeek, 40, and Jari Jacobs, 39, from Brussels, Belgium, “have difficult jobs.”
“She works late. I work early," said Verbeek. "So communication is key for being together, for doing things together and keep the relationship alive.”
Rafael Almeida thinks love has to do with solid planning for the future.
“We have already married, and to have children was our big dream together, and we are planning to expand our family,” he said in Rome, on a visit from his home in Brazil.. “We are planning and fighting for that.”
But love is also the daily practice of showing "the respect and admiration we have for each other every day.”
Erin Smalley wanted the bed made. Her husband, Greg Smalley (Annie’s dad), didn’t see why when he’d just have to climb back under the covers in a few hours. Decades of marriage, several children and co-hosting a podcast did little to resolve this ongoing dispute. Until, that is, Greg watched Erin hobble around with a recent foot injury as she made the bed herself.
“I know it doesn’t make sense to you,” Erin explained, “But I really like our bed made. It makes me feel good.”
“I finally got it,” Greg Smalley, a vice president at Focus on the Family, a Colorado-based Christian nonprofit, wrote in his email. “I realized that this was an opportunity to sacrifice a little bit of my time in the morning for my wife.”
These days, he says, he makes the bed every day.
Contributing to this story were AP journalists Zheng Liu and Wayne Zhang in Beijing, Trisha Thomas and Silvia Stellacci in Rome, Alex Turnbull in Paris and Rio Yamat in Las Vegas.
A Valentine heart cushion is seen at a grocery store in Buffalo Grove, Ill., Monday, Feb. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)
FILE - A man walks holding flowers and balloons on Valentine's Day, Friday, Feb. 14, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki, File)
Colombia's Ambassador in the United States Daniel García-Peña, right, hands out flowers from Colombia to pedestrians outside the Longworth House Office Building ahead of Valentine's Day, as a symbol of the close partnership between Colombia and the United States, Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Valentine's day Plush bears are displayed at a retail store in Lincolnshire, Ill., Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)
FILE - A couple share a tender moment near a flower market celebrating International Women's Day in Tbilisi, Georgia, March 8, 2022. (AP Photo/Shakh Aivazov, File)
