Sean Faye presents the case for abandoning Valentine’s Day…. and adopting spontaneous romance
It’s that tine of year again – Valentine’s Day. My cynically-disposed mind imagines the typical scores of cheating boyfriends presenting their girlfriends with ‘on-offer’ flowers and battered Milk Tray boxes, bought from the Tesco Metro on the way home. The really romantic chaps may even book a table at Pizza Express (set menu, of course). My problem with Valentine’s Day is that it is typifies the smug, yet half-arsed attitude of modern couples. I have often believed that ‘Valentine’s Day’ should be renamed ‘Co-dependence Day,’ not because all couples that choose to celebrate their love on February 14 are necessarily co-dependent, but because the day naturally fosters the co-dependent ideals that surround us throughout the year.
I already know what you’re thinking. You have probably guessed that I’m single; I will fill you in further and tell you I have never been in a relationship and never celebrated Valentine’s Day (I never even did that creepily Freudian thing when you make your mum a card instead). So I am clearly an embittered, loveless cynic. That is a view I am not entirely unfamiliar with, having been told so every year by my marauding bands of loved-up friends. Yet often the friends that tell me this one year are the ones who are forcing me to do something with them to avoid Valentine’s Day the next. Valentine’s Day seems like a day set aside for people who like to feel self-indulgent and waste endless hours walking around with their chosen companion, regardless of whether they like them that much or not, and then going for an overpriced meal. Perhaps it’s just me, but that doesn’t seem different to any other day. The only difference on ‘Co-dependence Day’ is that single people are shamed out of bars, cafes and restaurants because instead of ID, you need a partner for entry.
What is most troubling, however, is that increasingly the spirit of Valentine’s Day is spreading throughout the year. Television, magazines and, often, our friends work on the mission statement ‘you’re nobody until somebody loves you.’ Anti-gay rhetoric has always considered same-sex relationships as a reprehensible ‘lifestyle choice.’ In fact, all types of relationships are equal in being a lifestyle choice, and for many, being single is too. On Valentine’s Day, however, such a belief is apparently unacceptable. The day makes relationships the norm and those who are not celebrating are excluded by their involuntary and deeply shameful status of ‘single.’ What surprises me most is the fact that so many women tacitly support what is surely one of the most sexist days in the calendar. Let’s face it, Valentine’s Day still works on the presumption that the man buys his partner a gift, arranges a sequence of romantic activities for her and perhaps throws in a bit of perfunctory sex at the end of the day. It is chiefly single women who are made to feel bad that they have no such wooer in mid-February. Being a girl without a guy on Valentine’s Day means you’ve failed in bagging a generous man. Sorry, since when did we all live in a Jane Austen novel? Whatever the circumstances of the pair are throughout the year, there is one day where women are made to feel like they must have a man to care for them and protect them or they’re worthless.
Another way in which Valentine’s Day epitomises the modern lifestyle is our complete incapability to have any genuine sense of romance. People are forced to pay their way to assembly-line romance or, perhaps even worse, do-it-yourself expressions of affection. Last year, one of my housemates had a card made for her out of felt. Her admirer had clearly spent a great deal amount of time making it, but resembling as it did a heart after a coronary attack, it earned only ridicule from both her and her friends. Another person I know made a paper rose out of a page of Cherwell. Comically enough, the romantic sentiment was dulled by the fact that a photo of me loomed across the carefully crafted petals. If we are being honest, our ‘aww isn’t that sweet’ response to a couple explaining their romantic treasure trail, or how they serenaded one another, actually masks the more natural ‘that’s fucking embarrassing’ response. Until the 19th Century, Valentine’s Day was marked by the sending of love letters. Handwritten, scented and often poetic, it is hard to imagine modern-day lovers pulling this off without looking disgustingly sentimental. Our generation are just too self-conscious to produce any spontaneous, genuine romance. Indeed, doesn’t a fixed calendar date run against the whole idea of romance anyway? Surely, one of the key ingredients must be spontaneity – I know the same card, flowers and restaurant every year would hardly have me burning in the flames of passion. Even anonymous valentines are slightly menacing on the one day it’s OK to stalk someone without being liable for a restraining order. At the root of most people’s celebration of Valentine’s Day is, above all, a sense of obligation. I have already said how Valentine’s Day stigmatises single people, but (from the outside looking in) it seems to do little for couples’ relationships either. The consumerist pressure on Valentine’s Day has become so great, as with Christmas and New Year, that one is led to believe if you don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day, your relationship is worthless. Like December 31st, Valentine’s Day begets such a weight of expectation from both partners that it is impossible to fully live up to it. If most lovers are honest, Valentine’s Day falls slightly flat, perhaps because in post-Reformation England, we lack the greater sensuality and festival culture of our European and South American counterparts. Its lack of inclusivity makes it anti-social for anyone but the couple themselves, who are forced to spend time with just each other, just because that’s what everyone else is doing. The amount of pressure is an unnecessary stress on the relationship. How many of our friends have had spats or even broken up with their boyfriend/girlfriend on Valentine’s Day? Take my advice, shrug off Valentine’s Day and spend quality time with your partner (if you have one) on February 15th instead – it’s a much bolder statement.
The Anti-Valentine
