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ith Valentine’s Day around the corner, romance is once again being aggressively marketed as flowers, prix fixe menus, and grand gestures meant to prove something. I’ve never been especially romantic, and I’m even less so now that I’m married with a kid. I’ve always disliked grand gestures of romance- flowers on the first date make me want to vomit. They’ve never felt thoughtful to me; they feel rushed, like someone trying to manufacture intimacy instead of letting it develop. I’ve always preferred connection that builds slowly, through conversation, consistency, and mutual understanding rather than spectacle.
Working in porn hasn’t changed that preference, but it has expanded my understanding of how many different ways love and intimacy can exist. Porn is performance, but it’s also one of the few spaces where intimacy is discussed openly, without shame or moral panic. Being immersed in an industry that refuses to treat sex as something unspeakable has made it impossible to cling to narrow ideas of what love is supposed to look like.
That education didn’t just come from the work itself. Hosting my podcast Holly Randall Unfiltered has been just as formative. Over the years, I’ve spoken with performers, creators, couples, and individuals whose relationships look nothing like the cultural default. Many of my guests are polyamorous or swingers. Some are deeply monogamous but sexually adventurous, while others separate emotional intimacy from sexual connection entirely. Listening to them talk honestly about how they love, negotiate boundaries, handle jealousy, and define commitment has been eye-opening.
What’s striking is how intentional most of these relationships are. When you step outside traditional scripts, you’re forced to communicate-- you can’t rely on assumptions. You have to ask questions, revisit agreements, and accept that love is not static. It becomes something you actively participate in, rather than something you perform on cue for holidays or social media. Watching people do that in real time has reinforced something I’ve always felt instinctively: there is no single correct way to love someone.
Being around so many different relationship models has made me more comfortable with my own. My marriage isn’t flashy. It isn’t performative. It doesn’t hinge on holidays or grand romantic gestures. It’s built on trust, shared values, and the kind of intimacy that grows out of living a life together, not presenting one. And that doesn’t make it lesser, it makes it ours.
Porn and the conversations surrounding it have taught me that intimacy doesn’t need to be justified by tradition or optics. It can be quiet or unconventional. It can be deeply sexual or barely sexual at all. It can involve two people or more. What matters is honesty, consent, and care, not whether it looks romantic enough from the outside.
So what did the porn industry teach me? That romance is optional, not mandatory, and that love is far too expansive to be reduced to a single formula. When intimacy is coaxed out of the shadows and talked about without judgment, it becomes easier to recognize its many shapes—including the unshowy, deeply lived-in kind that doesn’t come with flowers on day one.
So as Valentine’s Day approaches, here at Wet Ink we’re less interested in roses and declarations than we are in celebrating the sheer variety of ways people love each other, in all the forms that don’t need a holiday to be valid.
