Courtesy of Glamour Magazine
A Quick Bulletin to Cheer Up Anyone Spending Valentine’s Day Alone… Again
If you’re spending this atrocious commercial holiday alone it’s okay. No really, it is. I do it all the time. And after years and years… and years of experience I can honestly say that I have found a way to actually still enjoy it, even if I’m doing so from the comfort of my couch.
The first trick of the trade for spending Valentine’s Day alone is to make sure you don’t feel bad to do so. This is the main problem I’ve run into whenever I want to happily like a friend’s cute couple date on Instagram and not feel a little spur of bitterness build, is the fact that I get mad and a little jealous. This feeling comes from not only the fact that you want what they have out of your own need for human affection, but also the fact that you being single leads to you feeling like you failed and then turning against the holiday as a whole rather than confront your failure. If you want to have fun alone on Valentine’s Day you need to let go of all of the negative emotion you’ve been programed to have. It’s perfectly fine staying single on the most romantic day of the year because it’s just that – one day out of the year. Should you really jump into a relationship or even risk an awkward date just because you want to go out to dinner like everyone else in America? That’s what we call a high risk for a little reward. Trust your intuition, if you’re single it’s probably for a reason. You haven’t met the right person yet or you’re not ready to settle down or maybe you have something building up. If this is what you feel like is the right thing to do and you’re happy with where you are then do it. No one knows you like you do and if that means that you are happy being single, stay single. Let go of all the loneliness and bitterness and get comfortable with who you are and wait for all the love dust to settle.
However, I also understand that a lot of this negativity isn’t from you. It’s from society around you. It’s from the candy covered grocery store aisles, the store window displays decked out in pink and red, the corny rom com movies and all of those teddy bears and greeting cards and roses that start to creep into the shelves as early as January 1st. These things create a sort of mental minefield of constant reminders that Cupid’s Day is coming and we all need to sacrifice our wallets to prove our loving devotion. The way to handle this is just to simply redefine these things. It’s not a reminder of how single you are, it’s a cute throwback to elementary school where everyone got candy and a Spiderman card and love was a far simpler notion having more to do with cooties than sex.
In fact redefine the entire holiday! No longer is this a date night for every couple and lonely Tinder user on the Earth, it’s a way to celebrate the fact that love can mean many things. Love your family, love your friends, love your pet, have one of those cheesy Galentine’s Day with your other single friends and remind yourself that just because you’re not in love doesn’t mean that you aren’t loved nor does it mean that you don’t have love to give. Sure this holiday started with a saint who married couples off in secret Romeo and Juliet style and then was built up by ad companies who saw a way of making tons of money just by putting a heart on something. But that doesn’t mean that the holiday that trademarks love has to mean only romantic love. Like many holidays in modern America, it’s up to interpretation and personal celebration. If your family tradition on Thanksgiving is to burn the turkey and just order a pizza, why can’t your Valentine’s Day tradition be going out dancing with friends? We get very little chances to appreciate ourselves and those around us, so why not use your empty social agenda on February 14th to do so?
If there’s one thing the world needs right now anyway is more love circulating around. Why not start here and now, with single people on Valentines Day? You hear that people? We’re not just lonely hearts eating ice cream in sweats or babysitting other people’s children while everyone else gets woo’d – we’re a movement! Singles March 2018, who’s with me? Oh … no one? Okay, cool.