single on valentine's day

the burden of being alone in a world that prioritizes partnership

When I was in eighth grade, I joined a bible study with some of my friends, and there was one meeting where we talked about writing letters to our future husbands. At the time, I was thirteen, I’d only had one half-hearted crush in my life, and I was obsessed with the idea of falling in love. All throughout middle school, my friends were loosely starting to date, going to dances, getting interested in kissing, and I was reading Twilight. (Okay, we were all reading Twilight, let’s be real.) I had never considered writing to my future husband, but from that day forward, I committed myself to the idea. I mean yes, surely, someday down the road, I would have someone. I felt hopeless at thirteen, that I was ugly and unloveable with lots of acne and the most annoying voice you’d ever heard, but God had a plan! I was going to fall in love! Someone would love me in spite of my flaws! I would get married! That’s what we’re promised!

As a little kid, I remember spending a lot of time watching the older people at our church because they were some of the only couples I saw outside my family. They were all characters, and I wanted to know their stories. Some of them had kids who were old and grown, some of them had kids who were my age or younger, and some of them had no kids at all. Some of them were single people. And I spent so much time wondering about the spinsters, about the people who didn’t have kids. Didn’t they want to be happy? Didn’t they feel sad because nobody ever loved them? Didn’t they want a good marriage? And around and around my little brain went, shaming these people I did not know and could not understand. I started to worry that I would become like them. That I would never find a husband, that I would never have a real family. That nobody would ever love me. I was terrified.

A year or two after I started writing to my future husband, I went to the movies with my best friend to watch Bride Wars. The film itself is forgettable, but I remember watching it feeling out of place. Do all young girls spend their childhood daydreaming about wedding dresses and bridesmaids and their special day? Should I be doing that? I want a wedding, right? But I pushed those thoughts from my brain and secretly vowed to try harder. We sat in the theater silently dreaming about the day we would have our magical weddings. I’d known my best friend since I was born, so we were both convinced we’d be each other’s maid of honor. It was inevitable. Marriage was inevitable. We would not become single thirty-somethings. We were lovable. I thought it over and over like a prayer: I will get married someday.

I wrote my future husband letters in a journal for about a year. I still have it, just in case, or rather, just for myself, and every time I open it I am slightly horrified and slightly sad. When I look at those entries, I can feel the internalized cisheteronormativity oozing out of myself. I can feel how much I hated myself, how ashamed I felt, how unlovable I felt. These entries are all around unimportant, and if I ever did find a husband, I’m sure he would find them hilarious. It was mostly me sitting around my hometown going, “Wow, it’s crazy you [my future husband] exist! You might be in the other room right now! We’re married! I’m shocked!” And while some of this was me projecting how unlovable I felt onto a journal page, how I truly believed no man would ever find me pretty enough or cool enough to marry, it’s more so a projection of how much I couldn’t imagine myself being in a marriage with a man. Because as much as I wanted one, or thought I did, the truth is that the idea made me incredibly uncomfortable.

For years growing up, I had problems with sexuality and romance, and I felt this diametric pull inside myself. I loved the idea of love, of marriage, of being with someone forever, but the harder I thought about the details and logistics, the more uncomfortable I got. It didn’t make sense. I didn’t know how you were supposed to be interested in someone, how you picked someone to marry, how someone would love you enough in your weakness and ugliness to be with you for the rest of their life. Sex sounded gross, marriage sounded like a trap, and I never wanted to kiss anyone. But I wanted to be married. I wanted to feel loved. I wanted someone to desire me. But I didn’t want to be seen. I wanted to be invisible, but it didn’t feel fair to me that no one wanted to see me.

It was all very frustrating at fifteen. I started to resent Valentine’s Day.

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I’ve never had a Valentine. At least, not romantically. I’ve only been on one date, and I didn’t have a date to prom. One guy has asked me to slow dance with him, but it was a pity slow dance (or a friendship one? Not sure). Other than a few matches on a dating app, no guy has ever asked me out or asked me to a school dance. I’ve never been kissed, never had sex, never wanted to do either of those things. I’ve been single, I’ll be single, and I am single right now.

But ever since I became aware that I did not have a romantic partner, Valentine’s Day has been difficult. I always loved writing Valentines for school, picking out the most hilarious themed cards or the shiny holographic ones and getting to celebrate at our desks in class with lots of sweets…when we were kids, Valentine’s Day felt like the love holiday. Everyone had to be included, and you still got presents because your mom loved you, and you didn’t have to be anything other than yourself. You didn’t have to kiss anyone, you didn’t have to impress anyone, and above all, your Valentines were your friends. Your classmates. Your family. It felt safe and fun.

Until it wasn’t.

Maybe it was in high school when people could send flowers to their partners and I never got any. Maybe it was in college when I knew people were getting engaged, or at least talking about getting engaged. Maybe it was when I started reading romance books. Maybe it was when I watched Valentine’s Day the movie. Maybe it was all of these things. But somewhere along the way, I started to dread Valentine’s Day. It made me sad. Because I feared (or maybe I just knew) that I would never have a partner. I didn’t know how to try harder or how I could get a guy to notice me, and even if I could, I was convinced nobody would ever love me like that. I wasn’t enough. I was too much. It wasn’t fair.

I have spent years of my life, decades even, worrying about romance. When I was little, I was afraid I’d never be loved. When I was a teenager, I was afraid I was unloveable. When I was in my early twenties, I was afraid I’d never find the right love. And for my entire life, I’ve been jealous of everyone else. Jealous of my parents and my grandparents for their long, happy marriages. Jealous of my best friends for finding their person in college. Jealous of my classmates for being able to date so callously. Jealous of my friends for being attractive and easy to date. And on and on and on. It stressed me out. It took up most of my time and energy. Even when I wasn’t actively thinking about it, I was reading about romance or listening to love songs or daydreaming about the distant someday where I was actually Loved.

That was a heavy burden. For a long time.

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The problem with Valentine’s Day is that it’s a commercial holiday. Capitalism wants you to feel bad so it can coerce you into spending money. To buy a card, to buy flowers, to buy chocolates, to go to a restaurant, to plan a date, to go to the movies. Have a date? Great, but you need to do more for them. Don’t have a date? Well, let us shame or tease you or taunt you until you go get one. Feel bad. Spend more money. Feel good. Spend more money. Valentine’s Day is a holiday about love, but it’s a holiday about shame. And when you don’t know yourself, when you don’t know a lot about the world or what you want or what you need, it’s easy to get caught up in feeling bad for yourself. It’s easy to feel like you are the problem, that you are unlovable.

And it is a shame because we teach kids at a young age that Valentine’s Day doesn’t have to be about romance. I always loved Valentine’s Day because my parents would write me cards and tell me how much they loved me, and I never felt like I needed a partner to feel loved. To love. We encourage little kids to give Valentines to all their classmates so everyone feels included, and I still have a selection of those Valentines from kids who weren’t even my friends. I didn’t feel shame or jealousy or anything bad. I just felt love.

But somewhere along the way, we take that away from teenagers. We push for marriage, we push for partnership, we push for a society where this is the norm, and if you don’t fit in that norm, you will try everything in your power to fit that norm. It becomes embarrassing if you don’t have a date, if you wanna go to prom by yourself, if you’ve never been kissed. If you aren’t straight. When everything you read or watch on TV is about falling in love, and falling in straight love, you wonder if there’s something wrong with you because nobody has fallen in love with you. And the acne doesn’t help.

I carried this burden, the burden of fitting into an allocishetero world, for more than two decades. I held onto it even when it was hurting me because to me, marriage and dating and romance was proof that you were lovable, that you were good enough, that you were Successful. I always thought that was the only way to love. Or rather, the only Real way to love. I had always had friends, I had always loved them too much, and somewhere down the line they usually would ditch me whenever they found a true partner.

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Allow me to tell you about two of the best Valentine’s Days I’ve ever had. They go hand in hand because they were with the same person, seven years apart, and they ultimately are mirror-images of each other. When I was a senior in high school, I had a friend who I’d developed a very close relationship with. You could say it was a weird, queerplatonic something or other, but at the time I was under the impression that I was demisexual, and I didn’t even have verbiage for queer things yet. So, we were very close. We talked constantly. We cared a little too much. And she was dating someone else. (I, of course, was single. Always.)

I do not remember how it played out like this, but on Valentine’s Day in 2013, my friend was not with her boyfriend. She chose to hang out with me instead at my house. We made strawberry cake from a box because it’s my favorite and my mom used to make it for us for Valentine’s Day when I was little. We watched a film together on my couch with my mom because we’d been eagerly waiting for it to come out on DVD. The film was The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and to this day, eleven years later, I’ve only ever watched that movie with her.

The night was simple, but it meant so much to me that my dating friend chose me that night. (And over and over again.) And seven years later, I flew into New York City to see her for the weekend, and she once again chose me over her long-term boyfriend at the time. She baked me a strawberry cake and picked up a pizza, and travelled with them through the NY subway system to get to me. Once she made it to my hotel, we turned on Perks and watched it for the fifth or sixth time and it was like nothing had changed. (She is engaged to that boyfriend now. She still would choose me over him on Valentine’s Day. I could cry.)

I can’t believe it took me as long as it did, but I have finally realized that I do not have to fit into the allocishet Valentine’s Day box. I do have friends who would spend Valentine’s Day with me, who would get me presents for Valentine’s Day, who love me as much (or more so) than a “partner” would. I can love my friends that much. I still have parents who adore me. I have all that love I was searching for when I was an unlovable thirteen year-old, it just didn’t show up the way I was expecting. Love doesn’t show up the way you expect it. Sometimes it’s bigger.

Since that Valentine’s Day in 2020, I’ve spent a lot of time sitting with myself. In the year following that New York trip, I realized that I’m aroace (not demi), and I’ve had a lot of relationships change. Gotten new ones, lost some old ones, cherished the ones I have. It’s funny that Valentine’s Day is advertised as a partnership holiday when I’ve found that it’s so much more about myself. I’ve had to become okay with being alone, with being my own person, with being single. And in doing that, I’ve found that Valentine’s Day is a lie. It’s not supposed to be about romance…at least, not in that way. It can be about partnership, if that’s your prerogative, but if Valentine’s Day is about love, we should be celebrating all kinds of love. Not just marriage or partnership or straight people or gay couples. Love is love, so they say, but not all love is treated equally.

When I think about my younger self, specifically what I would say to her if we could speak now, I don’t have much to say. Not because I don’t Know Things now, but because we do not listen. At thirteen I would not listen to anybody. Even now, though I try to listen when I can, I still think I know best. I don’t want to hear about how things will get better, how sometimes people come into their own later in life, how it’s okay to just be who you are…Even if that’s all true, it doesn’t make life any easier. If twenty-eight year old me told me at thirteen that I should embrace my friendships, that I don’t need or want to get married, that I am lovable even with my acne, I would have felt worse, like I had grown up and chose to opt out because I wasn’t good enough to just be “normal.” I had to walk the road to get here, learn a lot of lessons, feel a lot of pain, because without that I would probably still let the world convince me that I’m waiting for someone.

And yeah, I do think I’m waiting for someone. I’m waiting for myself in old age. I’m waiting for the friends I haven’t met. I’m waiting for my friends’ partners and my friends’ children and my cousins’ kids and my brother in old age and my parents in old age and the art I’m going to create and the books I’m going to read and the places I will go and the food I’m going to eat and the better world we are going to create.

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If you are single on Valentine’s Day, and you have spent any part of this day or this week or this month worrying that you are alone, worrying that you are unlovable, worrying that you are failing or falling behind, worrying that you will always be sad and unhappy on this holiday, this is for you:

Lean into yourself. You are here, you are breathing, you are stronger than you think. Maybe you are all you have, and if that’s true, you are allowed to savor yourself. You have walked this long alone, and you made it. You are still making it. Every day you are making it, and that is enough. Do something just for you, with no strings attached. Do not think about it, just do it.

I know you want someone. I know sometimes there is a place in your heart only a certain someone can fill. But consider all the other people who are in your heart. Call your parents, call your brother, call your best friend. Watch the person who makes your food, who works the cash register, who sits next to you on the train, and know that you are not alone. That there are millions of hearts beating in tune with yours at this moment, and they all want you to feel loved. Smile at someone.

You are hereby released from your contract to find somebody. You are no longer required to feel the burden of leaving singleness. You are allowed to be who you are right now, nothing more and nothing less. You are allowed to stop pining for people who do not treat you well. You are allowed to eat what you want, what you need, when you need it. You are allowed to have acne, to not wash your hair, to leave your dishes in the sink. You are allowed to change. To stay the same. To try something new. To stay where you are. You are allowed to feel everything. You are allowed to cry. You are allowed to not cry. You are allowed to wish for a different life. You are allowed to mourn. You are allowed to spend this holiday doing whatever you want with whomever you want and not feel ashamed. You are allowed to not want marriage. You are allowed to crave marriage with your whole heart. You are allowed to not want or seek out or desire or yearn for or think about love in all its many forms.

The truth is, the universe works in mysterious ways. Maybe you don’t have someone today, but I fully believe that someone will find you. It might take time. It may not be who you expect or what you thought you needed, but it will change you. This person, these people, that place, will make you see the world in ways you never expected. Whether they stay forever or leave after a short time, they will remind you why you are alive. They may not be a romantic partner. They may be a friend or a calling or a god. They may be a lot of things. They may just be a future version of yourself. Be open to where the road may lead you, even if it is hard, even if it is uncomfortable. Be open. Be open. Be open. Let love find you.

And stop feeling bad for yourself! Stop feeling like you are unlovable! Stop feeling like you are destined for sorrow! You are living a life of joy! There is music to be heard and air to breathe and rain to feel and sun to sit in and bigger things than you. I love you! I love you I love you I love you and I do not want to see you sad on such a beautiful day. Let me be your Valentine. Let us be your Valentine.

xoxo