‘It Would Be A Sure Sign Something Was Wrong’: Meet The Couples Who Don’t Celebrate Anniversaries

“We have a distaste for it all,” Mackie explains to me over email. “This is probably for many reasons: not showing-off, not tempting fate, feeling it’s superficial, material, and trivial in comparison with the relationship, and not needing that kind of mutual reinforcement.” 

In fact, Mackie goes so far as to say that to celebrate now would be a “sure sign” something was going wrong in their relationship – and confirms his wife feels exactly the same way. 

They aren’t the only ones to buck the trend – a survey from 2016 found 46% of British couples don’t bother marking their wedding date, and a fifth didn’t even know when their anniversary date was. 

Celebrities such as Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, who’ve been married for more than two decades, famously admitted their anniversary means nothing to them as a couple anymore. “We don’t really celebrate that day anymore in that sense, because the context of our union is totally different,” Pinkett Smith said on a podcast earlier this year. “Our marriage is more of a life partnership.” 

Daria Gerasimova, from London, who has been with her partner Josh for five years agrees that being in a long-term relationship starts to transcend those annual markers – she celebrates everyday acts of kindness instead.