Last-minute Valentine’s Day guide for singles

If your inability to participate in corporatized holidays causes you to descend into an emotional tailspin, chances are you’re feeling some trepidations about Valentine’s Day. But fear not! As much as all those happy couples on your TV screen want you to feel inadequate, lonely, and incapable of being loved on Valentine’s Day, there’s no reason you should be obligated to feel sad just because some CEO somewhere threw a dart at a calendar and selected Feb. 14 as the day when all single people are supposed to weep into their microwaveable dinners as “Love Stinks” alternates with “Missing You” on the jukebox.

As a single person on Valentine’s Day, it’s easy to feel excluded. You see couples holding hands and/or sex organs in the street, sauntering into fancy restaurants, and appearing simply happier than you. (I mean, who wouldn’t be ecstatic, honestly, after receiving a Pandora charm bracelet from Jared? The Pandora charm bracelet is the perfect gift for young couples still in the dizzyingly gleeful period of an early relationship, the golden time of uninhibited romance before they realize that evil will start infiltrating the relationship once the proverbial [and/or literal?] box is opened. This parenthetical aside has been brought to you by Jared.)

Don’t buy into the illusion.

See, couples on Valentine’s Day appear to be having such a wonderful time because they face enormous cultural pressure to have a wonderful time. While certainly some couple are indeed blissful, most others are just putting on a facade. Valentine’s Day is stressful for people in relationships: there are presents to buy, reservations to make, presents to frantically return when you realize she doesn’t wear earrings, and handcrafted cards to, uh, handcraft. Couples must be in their Sunday bests and on their best behavior, and the expectation, whether unfair or not, is that the evening should unfold flawlessly. The smallest of mistakes can snowball into large rows later — the ability to put tiny concerns on the back-burner until they grow so hot as to bubble over is indicative of a healthy relationship, trust me — so most couples spend the so-called “holiday” treading on eggshells and doing their best not to bungle things.

If you’re single, do you really want to be a part of all that?

So stop fretting, single people, and embrace the fact you’re privileged enough to be allowed stress-free Valentine’s Days. As the couples around you scramble to have the most fun and romantic time possible — because even a single moment of boredom or dissatisfaction means the relationship is doomed to fail! — you get to relax and ignore all the unnecessary hullabaloo. Feeling sad about your lack of a relationship isn’t worth it on a day where the people actually in relationships are likely feeling unholy amounts of stress.

No, if your going to feel upset about being single, feel upset on literally any other day of the year. You have plenty to pick from — the rumor is there are 364 — so select a 24-hour period to spiral into a pit of self-loathing and depression and have at it!