Day Twenty Eight

My Thoughts on Valentine's Day

So I'm sure you all know it's Valentine's Day, supposedly the most romantic, love-filled day of the year. I've never really been a huge fan of Valentine's Day, and that hasn't changed this year, so it's not just a "single me" thing. Valentine's Day was awesome in elementary school - everyone wrote a valentine for everyone else in the class and there was a ton of candy and that was the extent of it. Everyone got candy and everyone was happy. After middle school comes around, the whole holiday just goes downhill.

There are four types of people on Valentine's Day: people in relationships, hopeful singles, hopeless singles, and people who can carry on their lives normally without making a huge deal of the holiday at all.

People in relationships are by far the worst kind of people on Valentine's Day. I'm not talking about the normal couples who maybe make the day an excuse to go out to dinner or exchange small gifts. I'm talking about the couples who make Valentine's Day the absolute worst day to be around them. There are couples who spend the other 364 days of the year fighting and lying and distrusting each other, then magically Valentine's Day rolls around and they're completely in love with no relationship issues whatsoever. There are girls who believe that the amount a man spends on her Valentine's Day present correlates with the amount he loves her. In turn, many guys are lead to believe that they have to give their girlfriend or fiance or wife the most amazing present to show that he truly does love her. The same is true vice versa, except males tend to expect something a little more sexual than flashy jewelry.

Then there are couples who take Valentine's Day as an opportunity to prove to the world how much they adore each other. You know who I'm talking about - the couple who feels the need to engage in an obscene amount of PDA and go on and on about how wonderful their significant other is to anyone who will listen. If you don't know that couple, there's a good chance you ARE that couple. To be fair though, occasionally only half of the couple is guilty of this behavior, but that doesn't make it any less annoying.

Hopeful singles are, in a way, the saddest group of people on Valentine's Day, and from what I've seen, they're mostly guys. I think the reason behind this is the fact that for some reason, it's still taboo for girls to make the initial romantic gesture. According to a survey of 277 students taken at a liberal-leaning college, "not a single man or woman wanted a proposal in which the woman asked the man to marry her."(Source)

Valentine's Day gives hopeful single males the a confidence boost comparable to the effect of liquid courage, and by liquid courage I mean...

The phenomenon occurs way before the legal drinking age though. Middle school and high school boys use the holiday as an excuse to ask out girls they wouldn't have had the guts to talk to any other day - the thought process is, "she can't say no on Valentine's Day, that would make her look like a total bitch."

Worst case for them, they get rejected and blame their attempt on Valentine's Day. The "Valentine's Day Confidence Effect" applies to not only single guys, but guys who are looking for a way to get their relationship to the next level. Did you know that 10 percent of all marriage proposal's take place on Valentine's Day? (That's according to the US Census.) Granted, some men choose Valentine's Day to make a romantic gesture even more romantic (see section on over the top Valentine's Day couples), but honestly, how special could it be if you share the same engagement date with literally hundreds of thousands of other people with the same idea?

You all know what I'm talking about when I say "hopeless singles." Their situation can pretty much be summed up with this:

I understand not wanting to be alone on Valentine's Day and getting annoyed by the Overly Attached Couples out there. It's tempting to spend the day cursing love and everyone who didn't ask them to be their Valentine, but trust me, hating on couples that are in love is not the way to cure your loneliness. Remember, there are literally millions of single people on any given Valentine's Day, so really, you're not alone. Maybe take a cue from the Hopeful Single and go out and try to meet one of those single people instead of spending the day all sad in your room. 

Now at this point, you might think I'm just a Valentine's Day Scrooge who thinks Valentine's Day should just cease to exist, but that's not the case. In opinion, Valentine's Day should be a day for couples to look at each other and say, "Hey, I love you." The gifts you exchange on Valentine's Day should be meaningful and show your significant other that you truly KNOW them. For example, this is what I bought my boyfriend for Valentine's Day:

I know that he absolutely loves Tolkien (he can sing the entire Misty Mountain Song) and going to see the Hobbit was the first thing we did when he came home from boot camp. I know he likes reading, and that he has way too much time on his hands at reception. I also know that he's thought about buying this book quite a few times, but never did. See, a perfectly thoughtful gift that didn't cost an arm and a leg. He bought me chocolate covered strawberries because he knows that while I don't really like flowers, I love chocolate. They're already more than halfway gone. 

My point is, if you're in a relationship, don't avoid celebrating Valentines Day, but make sure it's really about how much you love each other, not money or status or anything else.

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!