When I was single, I hated Valentine’s Day because it seemed to be a holiday designed to punish single people. Now that I’m on the road towards marriage, I still hate Valentine’s Day, but now it’s because it’s a day to punish people in a relationship.
Valentine’s Day comes to punish us all.
As much as it can be stressful for a single person to have to endure a holiday that’s admonishing them for being alone, no matter how happy they may be for the remaining 364 days of the year, once you’re in a relationship it’s not like Valentine’s Day actually makes things better. It’s not about celebrating your happiness with your significant other, it’s now about how you need to jump through a bunch of hoops to prove that your love is real.
You must go to that busy restaurant, even if neither of you enjoy crowds that much, because you have to celebrate your love. You must buy each other expensive gifts, you must set the day aside for romantic gestures. A single person can get away with just ignoring the day as it admonishes them for being alone. In a relationship, you can’t even ignore it anymore. If you do, you’re not really in a relationship, the forces of Valentine’s decree. No, it’s not true love unless it’s filled with heart-shaped garbage.
I have a feeling that more relationships have been ruined by the spectre of Valentine’s Day than have been enhanced by it. Obligatory romantic gestures suck the actual romance out of them. There’s nothing spontaneous about doing something for Valentine’s Day. Even a proposal has an aura of obligation if it’s done at the middle point of February instead of on a day that isn’t laden with baggage.
What we need to do is kill Valentine’s Day.
We don’t need to kill romance, everyone still loves romance. We don’t need to kill relationships, everyone still loves each other. No, we need to kill the pink-slathered, heart-encrusted, cynical celebration of by-the-numbers affection obligations that Valentine’s Day represents. We need to take our lovers out to dinner to nice restaurants on other days in February, when they are less busy and more romantic. We need to go on romantic walks in months where it’s not cold. We need to propose marriage on weeks with no particular holiday so it doesn’t feel like going through the motions.
We need to make our own days of celebration, ones unique to each couple instead of a shared festival of pink and hearts. Romance can’t live while Valentine’s Day continues it’s dominanation of the subject,.We must strike it down for good.
