By 
Studies continually tell us that Valentine’s Day–not Christmas–is the time of the highest suicide rate of the year.
Just wanted to start this one out on a cheery note.
That’s unfortunate for many obvious reasons, in part because it’s just so unjustified, and avoidable.
Valentine’s Day, obviously is not some mid-winter measure of how you’re doing in life, or how you should feel about yourself. I mean duh, right? When I say that sentence, you immediately agree. You nod along. You fucking know it’s true.
You know that being distraught on Valentine’s Day because you’re single is like being distraught on Star Wars Day because there are no nerds around, or being distraught on Halloween because you decided to go as “yourself” to a costume party, and you just now realized how lame you are.
Like okay, you’re kind of left out of a holiday. Some kids are having a party, and you’re not a part of it. Oh well. Fortunately, you’re also a grown-up, so everything is a-okay!
Right? No? Not at all? You still feel like you have an empty box of chocolate hearts in your chest?
Given this nagging, irrational and (apparently) destructive thought process, it’s tempting to say we should just get rid of Valentine’s Day all together–in the same way we should ban sugar, or fireworks, or housewife-based TV. Just completely eliminate the thing causing harm to people who misuse it.
But fuck that. America is all about legalizing things that harm millions because like 10,000 people use them to jerk off. That’s what freedom is about, and besides, we’re not going to just lose a holiday just because it bums a lot of people out. Let’s live in reality here.
We don’t need to do away with Valentine’s Day. We just need to stop seeing it as some kind of benchmark. It’s not Christmas. It’s not Halloween. It’s a second anniversary couples have had thrust upon them with a social contract they never signed.
So let’s attack some of the dumber thoughts we have that lead to us caring way too much about this day, so that we can all stop allowing it to make us miserable.
Bad Thought #1: “Oh my God! I’m single?”
One of the most bizarre things about Valentine’s Day is how people save their despair over being single for this one day–as if the entire purpose of a relationship is to do something on a day in February with someone, and you’re otherwise not missing out on anything.
You kind of get the impression people are just now realizing they’re not in a relationship.
“Well no, it’s not that, but I don’t know. It’s just a reminder of what I don’t have,” she said through stupid, stupid tears.
What were you doing for the other 364 days of the year? Where was your head? Exactly how much were you escaping reality in order to avoid thinking about your eternal solitude?
This is part of the problem with holidays in general. Valentine’s has become to love what New Year’s has become to self-improvement. You go, “Okay this is the designated time,” and you put all of this pressure on this one time of year to care about this important thing. And because you do that, you ignore it for the rest of the year, and do nothing about it.
For New Year’s, this means we dedicate the beginning of the year to caring about self-improvement, then taper off by, oh, about right now, and then we do nothing to improve ourselves for the entire rest of the year.
For Valentine’s, this means that we do nothing, have meltdowns on the actual day, lower our standards for a few weeks, date some weirdos, get fucked up on St. Patrick’s Day, forget any of it ever happened, and move on with our lives like everything is normal.
Then we go through the rest of the year, blissfully ignorant of how much a relationship matters to us, or how much we want to improve ourselves. We turn to our go-to escapes every time it bothers us, we do nothing constructive to change it, and then we freak out again the next year.
The solution here is to actually talk to yourself a little. Realize how much a relationship matters to you, take the stress you have from not having a relationship, and spread it out over the course of the year, and use that as motivation to take some God damn action earlier in the year.
Or you could also realize that being in a relationship matters way too much to you.
Bad Thought #2: “I need someone to value me in order to feel valuable.”
Let’s get this out of the way first: Just because you freak out on Valentine’s Day, it doesn’t mean that you’re overly reliant on a relationship. It may just be a sign that you take a holiday too seriously. If that’s the case, this may not be that serious. Maybe you just need to decorate less, and stay off of Instagram for a couple days.
But if it goes beyond that, and goes into how badly you want a relationship, listen up.
Do you ever find it unsettling when a girl shows off her engagement ring to her friends? There’s something…off-putting about it, isn’t there?
No, it’s not just because you’re jealous. It’s because the act of doing this has a creepy subtext of “Look what I accomplished. I worked really hard in my life, and became worthy of having this thing.” It’s weird, low-level patriarchal horseshit, and it’s rooted in a bigger fucked up value many of us have that is making you even more miserable on Valentine’s Day.
So let’s get that fucked up value out there loud and clear right now:
BEING IN A RELATIONSHIP IS NOT AN ACCOMPLISHMENT.
Too many people look at finding a relationship as some kind of weird equivalent to doing well, when really, it’s just finding someone you like who also likes you (or at least is afraid enough of being alone that they decide to stick out this muck-ridden slog known as life with you.)
You have nothing to be proud of for finding someone who likes being around you. Nobody’s value in all of history should be defined this way. You’re not deserving of love less than anybody else just because they found it, and no one deserves a medal for finding someone who wants to fuck them.
Volunteering for one day at a soup kitchen, or contributing work to a successful business, or being genuinely happy for others’ success, is a way more accurate measure of someone “doing well.”
Relationships can be great. Don’t get me wrong. They can bring you a lot of joy, a lot of support, and eventually you can even bring new people into them (don’t make this weird. I meant having kids).
But if you feel like you need a relationship in order to have a good life, that’s not a sign that you should get into one. It’s a sign that you shouldn’t. It’s a sign that you should work on yourself, and work on standing on your own two feet for a while.
Bad Thought #3: “There’s nothing I can do.”
Oh, kindly go fuck yourself.
There are many ways to take action here. Try different dating apps. Try different tactics on dating apps. Don’t be so stupidly judgmental, try asking somebody else about themselves a little, take care of yourself more, lower your standards.
In all facets of life, there are so many things you could be trying that you’re not right now, and I think you know that.
You see, most failure in love, and in life in general comes from inaction that stems from a fear of failure. In love, this often means making a very token amount of effort, giving up quickly, and calling it hopeless.
But it’s not hopeless and you know it. There are too many assholes in love, and too many good people out there you just haven’t met in the right context yet.
So stay aware of how much you’d like to share your life with someone. Remember how badly you want someone with whom you can have these special moments. Remember how much you’d like to bother your neighbors for once with obnoxious screams of passion.
Remember all of this in March, and June, and September. Open yourself up, look for the good in people, and don’t take this shit so seriously. After all, even if you never find the perfect person, you’ll be fine on your own, and you can still be way, way more fulfilled than the person who thinks they accomplished something because they share a bed with someone.
So keep your chin up. Seriously, chin up. Otherwise you totally get a double chin, and that’s probably why nobody likes you.
But seriously, you’ll be fine. Chill out, and remember that Valentine’s Day is a fun day to do stuff with someone you love–not a day to become someone that you hate.
