Below The Surface Of Singleness On Valentine’s Day
By Megan Muñoz, IMH Valentine’s Day… Just hearing these two words can set off a number of different emotions and thoughts from excitement and anticipation to sadness and frustration. How can these two little words have so much influence on our emotions? It’s just another holiday, right? Designed by the card companies to guilt people into spending money and time. But if we take a deeper look, we discover that in similar ways to other holidays whose focus is primarily on relationships, Valentine’s Day can be a painful reminder of how we fall short of the projected romantic ideal. Our first task is to wade through the cleverly designed advertisements, designed to make us feel that nothing short of the perfect Valentine’s Day dinner and gift will do. We can acknowledge that monetary expressions do not equal the weight of our love and not having a significant other on this holiday is not a reflection of our value and lovability. But once we’ve waded through the ...