Ugh. It's almost Valentine's Day.
It's also Black History Month, though, which is pretty cool… after Trump’s inauguration, I'm not feeling much love for anyone, though.
I decided this month to take a look at romance and dating. We go through these mating rituals where we send our representatives to dinner and coffee with other people's representatives in hopes that love will be found.
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pin_description="" dam="1" site_id=24172095 caption="" photo_credit_src="https://unsplash.com/@snacky?utm_source=RebelMouse&utm_medium=referral" original_size="4000x6000" photo_credit="Photo by Jackie Tan on Unsplash" expand=1]
Photo by Jackie Tan on Unsplash
Let me just go ahead and ruin that for you. The idea of romantic love—at least the way we see it—has only been around for a few hundred years. The word soulmate didn't exist as we know it until about 200 years ago. It showed up in a poem. Can you imagine taking a hallmark card from today and using it as the standard by which we gauge relationships in the future? That's basically what happened with soul mates.
See, a long ago, marriage was mostly about property, land, and heirs. It wasn't until after Queen Victoria's wedding that the idea of marriage for love and modern ideas of romance really entered the mainstream. In fact the idea that love was a fleeting feeling and had no business in a marriage was quite common.
Scientifically speaking, the romantic love we feel for another person only lasts at maximum three years. After that the connection we have with our significant other is based on shared experience, common goals, and values. In other words, no one is going to feel like this forever.
Robert Frost wrote that, "Love is the irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired"—which to me means we want someone to fall in love with us to make us feel better about us. It's great to have someone be interested in us! Wow! What a feeling! Unless they're a stalker. How often do we reciprocate?
It seems to me like we put it all out on the line and for what? We could just love ourselves and send ourselves flowers? I'm not above sending flowers to myself from my vibrator. I would also secretly take pleasure in telling coworkers who the flowers were from, because I'm a walking HR nightmare.
I'm also still holding out for someone to send me an animal heart with a nail through it. We shall see if my dreams ever come true.
Valentine's Day is just another Hallmark holiday made to make single people feel bad. Don't get me wrong, when I'm in a relationship on Valentine's Day, I will totally guilt my partner into buying me crap. I will return the favor by giving them some poorly thought out gift because I'm totally self-involved. My gifts are more like, "Here's something I spent very little money on and put even less time into you. But you have me! Congrats!" This is probably why I don't do relationships well.
I find it odd that we have charities that will buy gifts for children on Christmas who wouldn't otherwise get them, but we don't have charities that buy gifts for loser adults on Valentine's Day. I'd both donate to and use that. Could you imagine setting up a bucket in front of Walmart and ringing a bell to collect change for the single on Valentine's Day? I almost feel like we might get more money just ringing the bell and yelling, "Help adults be less suicidal on Valentine's Day!" I think I might be on to something.
I feel like society puts pressure on us to have a “Valentine.” Valentine's Day is weird, anyway: it's like, “Thanks for standing in for porn and my sex toy drawer most of the time, so here's some stuff.”
If you're single for this holiday, let me assure you, the problem is other people. I know some fantastic people who are habitually single. Every year they do the woe is me Valentine's dance. I scratch my head wondering why these people are single. And further more why they are comparing themselves to people who aren't. Look, nobody gets a medal for settling.
We put a lot of pressure on ourselves for a lot of holidays: "It has to be special, it's Christmas" or "It has to be perfect, it's Valentine's Day." But it doesn't have to be anything. Be a good partner year around: that way if everything goes to s**t on a holiday you're covered. You've put in relationship equity, you don't need to do more.
And really what's so special about Valentine's Day? You get flowers? They die. Stuffed animal? Where's that gonna go? You're an adult. Candy? Cool. You regret eating it later. A massage? Okay. Buy that for yourself. In fact buy all that stuff for yourself if you really want it.
Last year, on Valentine's Day, the psycho who went through my phone and got mad because I dated people before them almost ruined Valentine's Day. Except, I have I best friend. I had decided I was seeing *Deadpool* come hell or high water, and that's what we did. I'm not gonna sit around and mope.
This year my significant other is away during Valentine's Day, so I'm gonna do something with my kids. And by do something I mean I'm going to make them go out with me to a place I pick whether they like it or not. You know, to prepare them for what dating is like.
Look, modern ideas of romance have us spending money left and right or searching dating profiles endlessly looking for the one. You want your self-esteem to take a gut punch? Scroll through Instagram, Tinder, or literally any social media. We're holding ourselves to insane standards and posting pictures of stretched truths to compete.
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caption="" dam=1 site_id=24172095 pin_description="" photo_credit_src="https://unsplash.com/@jasmine_waheed?utm_source=RebelMouse&utm_medium=referral" original_size="2832x4256" photo_credit="Photo by Jasmine Waheed on Unsplash" expand=1]
Photo by Jasmine Waheed on Unsplash
Be selfish on Valentine's Day! Send yourself gifts, bang an ex, eat your body weight in fondue or Whitman’s Samplers. Who cares?! Being single doesn't diminish your value. And romance is a modern invention. After Queen Victoria's wedding, the advent of the modern wedding planning industry started (basically to encourage poor people to marry like the wealthy), and this is what ushered in the modern day takes on romance.
Valentine's Day is just another trick to perpetuate the myth of romance that sells the junk they peddle. Sorry, but romance is just a really good marketing ploy. Have a happy Valentine's Day! I'm nearly certain my butt plug is sending me flowers at work.
