Ah, Valentine’s Day!
A time when laughter and romantic notions of love fills the air and our hearts, giving us all the warm fuzzies.
Unless you are single and especially if you’re of the female persuasion. In that case, Valentine’s Day is to Love as Disney is to Grimm’s Fairy tales.
Valentine’s Day has this amazing ability to magnify the negative feeling of being single by Hubble Telescopic proportions.
An older male (you define older) who was a confirmed bachelor, in the classic sense, was simply a guy who has chosen not to get married. Not that there is something specifically wrong with him which would make him undesirable; simply that he has made the conscious decision to not marry. There are no (well little) negative connotations to that.
The word for a confirmed bachelorette, in the classic sense, was spinster, even if she was in her twenties. After all if a woman wasn’t married and presumably procreating, apparently all she was good for was twisting thread at the spindle? I’d like to throw in that as I typed the word “spinster” my grammar check immediately green-lined me to use the phrase “unmarried woman” instead. I didn’t know my grammar check was so PC! Now if said spinster cum unmarried woman dares to indulge her needs as a sexual being – well, you fill in the blanks… And Gee! Look how much has changed over the centuries in that regard!
If you have friends / Families with significant others you will also have to put up with giggling plans for the big V-Day and you know (or at least really, really feel) they are just showing off. You kind of feel, while they are canoodling in the corner, they’re also glancing at you with semi-pity from the corners of their eyes, thinking: Why don’t you have someone (yet)?
Now throw in all the Jared, “Every kiss begins with “Kay”” and 1-800-FLOWERS ads permeating our televisions and emails.
If you’ve been single for a short or long while , other than the November-December holidays in general (which is its own mind fuck unto itself for the single gal), this is the time of year where you’re most likely to question of yourself: What is wrong with me?
Yeah, I’ve been there more than enough times and do you know what the answer is?
NOT A DAMNED THING!
Sorry Jerry McGuire fans, but I’m about to piss you off. A significant other enhances who you are; they do not complete you, because you are already a whole person. A significant other does not make you any more important or special than before that person interred your life. Because you value yourself, that makes you important. Because you do not just take whatever is thrown your way, for the sake of having a partner, you are special.
In addition, it helps to remind yourself that these “oh so in love with love for the sake of the love of love” semi-perfect couples around Valentines Day are likely the same semi-perfect couples who had a blow up just last week, or last month or whenever. That angel of a partner may be the same person one of your BFFs may be bitching loudly about in another couple of weeks or months.
Go get yourself something sweet, a glass of whatever you want to drink, light some candles, play some anti-love songs and just take it all in stride.
Raivenne-lations 
…In addition, it helps to remind yourself that these “oh so in love with love for the sake of the love of love” semi-perfect couples around Valentines Day are likely the same semi-perfect couples who had a blow up just last week, or last month or whenever…
I always get the same feeling from the speeches made by the Oscar winners. After being married 20 years, I also feel that a person can (must?) be complete as a single.
I’ve always enjoyed Valentines Day. Yeah, I know that it’s a made up holiday, but so is pretty much every other holiday.
Last year, I had a very bittersweet Valentines Day. I spent it with a person that I truly loved, who was unable/unwilling to feel the same. She HATED Valentines Day, and while she told me that it was because it was a contrived holiday, deep down I know it was because she’d never had a good man in her life. It hurt me to know that……….it hurt me more knowing that I wasn’t the person she wanted to be with.
Despite that, I wanted to make her feel special, so I drove to see her, only to find a disaster at her house. Her ceiling had caved in, due to her upstairs neighbor fooling with the plumbing in the house. As a result, she had sewage all over her floor, her furniture, her clothes.
I did what any guy would do to show their love. I cleaned everything, mopped the floors with bleach, cleaned the furniture, and paid to launder and clean all of her clothes. We then went to the local all you can eat sushi bar and drowned out our sorrows (and the smell of bleach) with dragon rolls, and spicy tuna.
I’m sorry I wasn’t the right person for her, perhaps no one is. I’ll never know. What I DO know, however, is for that one weekend, she knew that she was loved.
For me, THAT’S what V-day is all about.
Bob, as Rupaul phrased: “If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell are you going to be able to love anybody else.”
Natural, you my dear, are a giant of heart among men, I tell you! That is indeed one of the most gracious examples of love.
May I be so endeared by the Fates to once again be loved that fully (Natural) and that long (Bob).
Happy Valentine’s Day, gents.