Valentine’s Day is a day filled with commercialized treats, cliche advertisements, and everyone’s opinion on how you should express your love. However, at its core, this holiday is meant for celebrating love and romance with your significant other and could even be a great opportunity for some people to showcase how much they appreciate their loved ones. Yet, from people with partners and without, Valentine’s Day regularly receives some negative feedback, for a variety of reasons. This leads people to wonder how a holiday that is meant to be cheerful and romantic leads to such widespread dissatisfaction. To find the answer, I asked women, both single and in relationships, what their least favorite part of Valentine’s Day is.
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Waiting in Line Forever
Mallory Vicedomini, 21, has been in a committed relationship with her boyfriend for about two years now. Even so, she has some complaints about the holiday. For her, the biggest issue with Valentine’s Day is the amount of excitement surrounding it because, “no matter where we go, we always end up having to wait in lines forever,” said Vicedomini. From the movie theaters to restaurants, every venue in the area is guaranteed to be crowded. There are too many endless rows of lines and outrageous wait times for the day to ever be truly the most romantic day of the year. To even begin to lessen the stress, reservations need to be made weeks in advance and even then the estimated wait times can be unreliable.
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Feeling Left Out
While she never has to wait in lines for romantic dinners, Kelly Doyle, 20, has the most common complaint about Valentine’s Day, which is not having someone to share it with. “Probably the worst thing about Valentine’s Day is not just not having someone, but seeing that everyone else has a valentine.” Usually unbothered by the holiday, Doyle can’t help but scroll through social media that day and look at all of the pictures of her friends with their significant others, enjoying the special day together.
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It’s a Commercial Holiday
Though Lindsey Lavelle, 21, does not currently have a partner, she does believe that Valentine’s Day is not the most practical holiday. “There shouldn’t be a need to have a day to show love and appreciation for people,” said Lavelle. “It should be like that anyway.” Lavelle has the view that, for some couples, Valentine’s Day is the time of the year that people try to make up for not appreciating each other enough on regular days, so they squeeze it all in one subpar day.
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Gift Giving is Too Stressful
Olivia DeFluri, 20, has been with her boyfriend for five years and still feels the pressures of the holiday. “Trying to give exactly the right gift is the hardest part,” said DeFluri. “We’ve had so many Valentine’s Days that it’s hard to think of something new.”
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It’s Expensive
As a married woman, Michelle Vavra, 26, has seen her fair share of Valentine’s Days with her husband. “It’s a made up holiday where girls feel bad when their boyfriends don’t buy them flowers,” said Vavra. In her opinion, the worst part about this supposedly love-oriented holiday is spending money on stuff that doesn’t matter, as well as trying to make Valentine’s Day dates more romantic than regular dates. “It’s nice to be in love,” said Vavra. “But the worst part is spending money on dumb things.”
All of these complaints about Valentine’s Day seem to center around the idea that it’s simply too superficial to be a good holiday. The gifts and dates are all metaphorical hoops that people have to jump through just to show someone that they love them. In reality, people should just be able to spend time with their loved ones on this day, without all of the pressure of the commercial aspects of Valentine’s Day. It shouldn’t be that different from any other day, but it is nice to have a little bit of an emphasis on the fact that this is a day to focus on and appreciate your relationships.