I cannot possibly think of a day when a single person puts more pressure on themselves than on Valentine’s Day. Right now, there are single people all over the city who are hiking up their skirts and rolling up their sleeves and getting serious about their Grindr-ing and bar hopping in a last minute effort to at LEAST get lucky on Valentine’s Day.
But I’ve got to tell you, there’s also a lot of pressure on us LTR-ers, and right now there are coupled people all over the city who are hiking up their sensible pantsuits and getting serious about trying to create the perfect chocolate-roses-champagnerolling-in-the-deep kind of Valentine’s date nights.
We’ve all been single on Valentine’s Day before.
We all need to calm down. We’re all in the same boat. Whether you identify with Glenn Close in “Fatal Attraction” and you-will-not-beignored, or whether you’re more like Meg Ryan in any of her happilyever-after movies from the early ‘90s, and the love gods have always smiled upon you — we all have an obtainable expectation of what our most romantic day of the year will have in store.
I have spent more Valentine’s Days as a single lady than I have in a relationship. So I remember those February 14ths that I spent wearing sweat pants. Stalking exes on MySpace. Crying. Lip syncing “Where Do Broken Hearts Go” in a candle-lit bubble bath. Crying. So I get it. It’s easy to be cranky, and it’s hard to see through the runny mascara and with a blanket over your head.
To make matters of the heart worse, we can commiserate with others online and people can “LIKE” and comment and reTweet our deepest thoughts.
With the onset of the modern world and the over-sharing of EVERYTHING on social media, it’s only natural for single people to take it to their statuses. We all have THAT friend who has somehow hijacked innocent Facebook-land and turned every single post into a nightmare-ish crash course on what to post if you want to stay single forever. Confidence is pretty damn sexy.
Then, I also get the impression that some people are in relationships on Facebook just to let everyone know they’re in a relationship on Facebook, and I think this might actually be more annoying. You know, the people who write messages on each other’s walls all the time: “Baby, I’m the lucky one” and “I love you so much.” These people know about texting, right?
Valentine’s Day, I think, if anything, it should be fun and a celebration of owning whatever your love situation is. Whether you’re singIe and at home with your cat. Or you’re single and minglin’. Or you’ve been in a relationship since Twin Peaks and the Ronald Reagan administration. There’s value in ALL of that.
It’s been said a million times, but it’s true: “Love comes when you least expect it.” You just have to leave the door open for it, and quit trying to make it happen
