Valentine's Day Aftermath

[tielan]

So, a few days before V-Day, I posted this on Tumblr. Mostly because I know it's a hard time of year for many, and worse when so many other people clearly have partners, and singles wonder why they're broken, what's wrong with them, why can't they have someone love them?

It's been a pretty popular post, actually; I think I touched a nerve.

I don't have that angst about being single. I've had little twinges every now and then, but it's not an emotional crisis for me the way it is for some friends.

In particular one friend who posts every year that 'maybe next year'. She split from her husband some time in the last ten years - I don't know the details, only that it wasn't pleasant - and is mother to two young women. And I know that's a hard road to walk from watching my own mother - alone, with a father whom society doesn't require to do the parenting or the support or anything more than be the beneficient promiser of all things, while mum has to be practical about it because mum's know who has to walk the dog and pick up the dogshit when dad brings the puppy home.

(And it just hit me that this is very much shades of Bernie and Hillary in the Democratic primary. Interesting.)

But I know it sticks with my friend and with many other single women, all of whom have been taught that they're Nobody Until Somebody Loves You. Emphasis on romantic love, on a man (it's usually het-focused) who will be everything you need, and to whom you will be everything.

It aches in me, sometimes - not that I'm single, but that I'm single and quite happy with it and that I can't share that contentment with other people so they don't feel like they're failures at being people. That I got a whole range of messages that were about me and my worth as a person, that the primary state of my body was to be functional not decorative, and that romantic/sexual love was always an optional extra.

Am I saying 'down with love'? Not at all. Some people find partners they can love, respect, and honour, and I salute you and your relationships.

But some of us don't. And finding someone you can love and be loved by isn't a sign of worthiness or value or successfulness or unpickiness, or whatever metric people like to pretend it is. If you found someone and you've stuck with this far, then good - I applaud you and hope that you're both working towards your relationship day by day.

The thing is, your relationship and it's ongoing maintenance is work - and hard work at that. But the fact that you met someone, were mutually attracted, and got all the little tangles of life worked out long enough to make a connection that said "well, maybe"? That was luck.

You were fortunate, and many people weren't or aren't, or haven't been and won't be.

And they're no less for not making that connection.

That's probably my biggest beef with Valentines' Day; that it's one more weapon in the arsenal of tools used to measure the worth of people - and especially women.

And now it's time to go to lunch and see if there's still chocolate on sale...

(I did like the post that said "Don't call it Valentine's Day; call it 'Cheap Chocolate Eve'.")

Comments

[monanotlisa]

I hear you. I often wish I weren't single, but not always, and it's not an existential angst.

Good post, yours.

[retsuko]

Well said!

[heliopausa]

absolutely right!