Dateless on Valentine's Day

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Were you alone on Valentine’s Day?

When I was younger, I sought consolation in being my own valentine; but I went about it all wrong. I'd buy myself a heart-shaped box of chocolates, put on my red and white heart-emblazoned pajamas, and curl up in front of the TV to watch a Lifetime Channel boy-meets-girl movie. The "happily ever after" was some kind of Valentine miracle, of course.

This plan was clearly a recipe for disaster.

Can't you picture it? The red candy box was tossed aside, a single bite taken out of each one because somehow I'd got the box with all the weird pink insides that nobody likes.

I end up in a pile of tears, drowning my sorrows in a mug of instant hot cocoa.

Why do we buy into the cultural pressure that says we have nothing if we don't have a date for Valentine's Day—not to mention Saturday nights? Instead of internalizing all this emphasis on dating—and wringing our hands over the time we spend alone—perhaps it's time to push back against all this media hype.

Oddly enough, I almost never go out on Saturday nights. I've come to appreciate my Saturday nights as my own to do whatever I want; which, as an introvert, is to enjoy the time I have for peaceful silence and contemplation.

I used to call it: "Single Girl Saturday Night," until I described it to a friend. She was perplexed. "Why would you call it that?" She rolled her eyes at me. Over the course of our conversation, I started to see that she had a point. Why am I putting so much emphasis on dating? Why couldn’t my Saturday night at home, just be called a quiet night in? Why was I so fixated on not having a date?

This is a crucial thing to consider if you were dateless on Valentine's Day.

In the same way that our culture provides us with endless reminders that our relationships should be more important than anything else, this one day out of the year presents itself as the pinnacle of this same kind of prioritizing.

I'm not going to finish this off wishing that everyone has a valentine for next year's Valentine's Day. Instead, I'll tell you that this was—and is—just one day out of the year. My wish, instead, is that you know you're loved, by your friends and family and most of all by the Holy Trinity who is the cornerstone of our faith.

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