Although we can all agree that Valentine’s Day is a consumerist holiday created by Hallmark to sell cards, chocolates and teddy bears to people wanting to remind their partners that they love them (even though, really, we shouldn’t need a specific day for this to happen…), being single on the 14th of February can come with its benefits…
Chocolate!
For those of us with a sweet tooth, just remember that the 15th of February is "half-price chocolate day’, as all the reject chocolate boxes that weren’t bought on Valentine’s Day are sold to the rest of us. Take this opportunity to stock up on as much cheap chocolate as you can and treat yourself!
Flowers!
Unless you have a severe pollen allergy, then you can take Valentine’s Day as an opportunity to buy yourself some flowers, or even just to enjoy the smell of roses everywhere. I mean, really, if you don’t have a partner to buy you flowers, you might as well remind yourself how much you love You!
Remember your Friends
Take Valentine’s Day as the perfect opportunity to meet up with your other single friends and do something for yourselves. DVD night at someone’s place, watching horror movies or musicals or maybe even those movies where girls band up against guys to destroy them (John Tucker Must Die, anyone?)? Maybe you could all glam yourselves up and go out to dinner, and be each other’s Valentines dates? Or maybe you could skip all that, make yourselves up to the max, and have a night on the town. Go crazy and get drunk with your best friends, remind yourselves that you don’t need a relationship to be happy, as long as you have your friends.
However, what I feel the most important thing to remember, as us singles sit alone on Valentine’s Day is…
You Don’t Need a Relationship to Validate Yourself
OK, fine, Cupid forgot to hit you and your future significant other with an arrow this year. And yeah, it sucks sometimes, being reminded that you don’t have a partner that you can rely on. Believe me, I get that. It doesn’t get easier as you get older too; you start to feel like maybe there’s something wrong with you, if you haven’t found someone yet, and most of your friends your age have found a boyfriend or a girlfriend, so why haven’t you?
You just need to remember that just because you’re not in a relationship doesn’t mean you can’t be happy, and it doesn’t make you less valid as a person. Yeah, sure, it gets lonely being single and sometimes all you want to do is call up your significant other and make plans even if it’s just to see their face for an hour, and it sucks that we can’t rely on someone like that. Yet.
Remember, it’s just a yet. If you’re the type of person who wants to be in a relationship, and who believes in "happy ever after’ and "soul mates’ and all that, then just steel your shoulders, take a deep breath, and love yourself this year. Don’t let your lack of a partner in your life deter your happiness this year; the best Valentine anyone can have is themselves. So be happy, knowing that you can never break up with you, and sit back with a glass of wine and wait for the perfect Valentine to come along. Maybe next year, maybe the year after that…definitely eventually.