On Why You Want to be Single for Valentine’s Day

"Her name is Lola, she was a showgirl
But that was thirty years ago
When they used to have a show
Now it's a disco, but not for Lola
Still in the dress she used to wear
Faded feathers in her hair
She sits there so refined
And drinks herself half-blind
She lost her youth and she lost her Tony
Now she's lost her mind
At the Copa..."

~Barry Manilow, Copa Cabana

Valentine’s Day is not for couples. It’s really for single people.

Yes, there are plenty of single people who feel pressured or shamed about their status around Valentine’s Day. (These people are likely women, since it’s improbable that a man is going to call up his friends and say “I am just really longing for some old-fashioned romance, know what I mean, dude?”) But for single people in general, the weeks before Valentine’s Day can be a bombardment of reminders that other people are blissfully, deliriously in love and are about to engage in a veritable orgy of romanticism. Completely rational, fulfilled women start to fear that the latter half of their life will be spent alone, drinking themselves into madness a la Sunset Boulevard or spending Saturday nights lurching around a decrepid wedding cake and setting fire to themselves.

Except that the apparent romantic bliss culminating in the ides of February isn't real. Ask your couple friends; it’s more likely to be characterized by fear, paranoia, anxiety and resentment than moonlight and rooftop slow dances. It’s not the Summer of Love. It’s actually more like the Cold War.

You see, the entire Valentine’s Day industry is sold to women as a romantic holiday. An opportunity to cherish the unique aspects of your relationship with your mate by doing something special and out of the ordinary. Like what? Well, like doing exactly the same thing or getting the same thing as every other couple in existence on February 14th: a dinner out and flowers if he’s unimaginative and classy, and a dinner out and edible chocolate body paint if he’s unimaginative and really, really not.

So what happened? The clever folks at Hallmark, Hershey’s, and FTD teamed up and got busy building women up to expect something truly romantic on that fateful day while simultaneously encouraging the male contingent to do something classically romantic and thus missing those expectations by a long shot. For women, romance is when their men demonstrate that they truly appreciate the myriad ways that they are different than any woman who came before. For men, it’s sold as an opportunity to buy something or do something to make up for 364 previous days of perceived un-specialness. Caving under the immense societal pressure, men revert to the tried and true: chocolates, flowers, or dinners, which unfortunately is exactly what they gifted every woman that came before. But if they don’t do this at all, then it ends up being what they’ll gift every woman that’s about to come, after the current one dumps him on February 15th for being insensitive.

Women, too, are left mystified as to how to mitigate the pressure. Have we been together long enough to celebrate the holiday? Do I get him a gift? What if he doesn’t do enough, or worse, what if he does too much and then I didn’t do enough? What if he gets me a watch and I made him a macaroni angel? It’s like a Mexican standoff…him, her, and the VP Marketing for DeBeers.

The single, meanwhile, get to lean back and just enjoy the carnage. If anything, Valentine’s Day is a great reminder to them that the truly romantic times in a relationship don’t usually come in the form of socially dictated dinners and birthstone pendants. They come at the beginning, with those little initial discoveries that are so precious and exciting (long before they start driving you absolutely crazy.) The first kiss, the first time you get to see where they live, the first sleepover, the first breakfast, the first trip away. The first time she realizes he puts hot sauce on everything, and the first time he realizes she hasn’t put oil in her car for two years. Single people know that those magical times are still ahead of them.

So take heart, Lonely Hearts. If you weren’t taken in by the AbFlex, then Valentine’s Day is nothing to worry about.