Where's the Love? The Reasons I Hate Valentine's Day

Posted by: Kayleigh Merritt

(photograph courtesy of www.cbc.ca)

I don't like jewelry. I have too many stuffed animals, and chocolate is too great a temptation. I find flowers to be an inconvenience as they die shortly after they're received, and I have to clean the vase they came in.

And it's now February. This means that within the next two weeks I can expect any number of red and pink presents and cards from friends and family that I will no doubt have to find a place for until enough time has passed for these things to become "lost." More importantly, it also means that fast approaching is the day of the year that far too many people will use to manipulate their significant others into being romantic. It's not that I have anything against romance—like most women out there, I'd love to find my own Lloyd Dobler to snuggle up to—but I find it rattling to live in a world that found need to designate a special day to show a little love.

The very fact that cards, presents, and extravagant dates are required should be enough to make a person question the sincerity of such gestures. Of course we all know that dinner and flowers should mean "I love you," but tack on the obligation and the message quickly becomes: "I'm sure that I could have taken you out for this special dinner, given you this special gift, and told you how much I loved you any other day this year. I didn't feel like it. But I will do it today because if I don't, society tells you to yell at me and make me sleep on the couch, and I like the comfort of my bed paired with the promise of sex."

If our significant other actually said those words out straight, wouldn't we smack them? Nevertheless, just as we are trained to buy pretty things on Valentine's Day, we have been trained to expect pretty things, and so we choose to ignore this implication. And, speaking from the female perspective, as a top-off to said training we get angry if unlike all of the girls around us, we didn't receive a beautiful bouquet of flowers or a shiny necklace, because how embarrassing that must have been, what with it being Valentine's Day and all…

It would be much nicer if on a random day with no significance, we came home to find our doorsteps layered in rose petals, or candles accompanied by a bottle of champagne waiting for us, or a card slipped under our doors filled with reminders of how much we are loved and why. Because isn't it the unexpected gifts that make all the difference?