By: Stephen C. Bosco, M.A.
Right around the middle of January as temperatures decrease and layers of clothing increase, we try our darndest to adhere to our New Year’s resolutions as well as avoid the cold by bundling up with a warm beverage. This is also during the time of year we begin to notice an overwhelming number of shiny new products being offered in all shades of red. As a former employee in the field of marketing, I understand the drive to push holiday related products out early, and yet I continue to be bothered by the overwhelming amount of holiday goodies being made available. Valentine’s Day is a holiday filled with romance and love and chocolates and roses and oversized stuffed animals and my personal favorite, those little heart shaped candies. This is a day to celebrate your partner, wife, husband, boyfriend, girlfriend, or whomever you share a consensual romantic bond. Valentine’s Day is also a holiday that makes salient the fact I am not in a relationship, to which I have dubbed this holiday “Single Awareness Day.”
Let me first say, I have never been a huge fan of Valentine’s Day. I find the holiday to be a marketing scheme as the candy and card companies shove products in our faces for us to purchase which will signify a token of our love. It is a one-day holiday that glorifies being able to share your love or profess your love to a person (or persons). One day! I believe if we love someone, we should tell them every day and with more than just a heart shaped box of chocolates; however, chocolates are delicious, and flowers that add life to any room in your home. Yet, as a single man I find Valentine’s Day especially difficult to tolerate this year.
I am not a cynical person. I believe in love and I have been in love and I have fallen out of love, but I have not given up on love. When I was one half of two, I experienced what it is like to be loved and cherished and I what it was like to be truly happy, a series of feelings that have the power to make any day a good day. Yet, being one of one I find it difficult to find self-love and accept that I thought I can provide myself love. The difficulty in allowing for self-love and self-acceptance is not made easier as a holiday built around positive emotions associated with romantic relationships approaches. I make myself feel jealous when I see all the Valentine’s Day gifts and cute couples holding hands because I don’t have a partner to share a heart-shaped box of chocolates with or a partner’s hand to hold. My feeling of jealousy is evoked by my self-downing belief, “I am not worthy of love and that is why I am single.” Have you ever thought that you need to be loved to feel a sense of worth? Have you ever struggled to find ways to keep that love intact? And, when you see others with the love you wish you had, do you make yourself feel a certain unhealthy negative emotion such as hurt, jealousy, anger, or depression? Just know you are not alone, I am right there with you.
I, like a vast majority of individuals, have experienced emotional pains along the journey to find love. Valentine’s Day is a holiday not often viewed as enjoyable, as it has the ability to provoke irrational beliefs about love, or jealous reactions to observing happy couples, but also this is a holiday that possesses the power of cognitive recall of our past emotional pitfalls. As previously mentioned, I have enjoyed beautiful relationships and felt immense amounts of love and although I would like to feel that type of love again, just because I do not have a partner to share love does not mean I am a worthless person. I continue to work on accepting this alternative belief that I can experience love without being one half of two. It is important that we remember that love is not only experienced between two people – love is also experienced within ourselves. We are all capable of self-acceptance and self-love, and remember you are loved and not alone on Valentine’s Day.
