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How to survive Valentine’s Day single

Valentine’s Day can be about self love.


Valentine’s Day. If you’re like me, these two words are enough to make you shiver with bitterness, cynicism and, if we’re completely honest, probably envy. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy for my gal pals who finally got with the man of their dreams at Fab last weekend, and are subsequently being treated to a dreamy date at Digbeth Dining Club, followed by a romantic Uber trip back to his crummy bedroom with walls too thin to hide from his flatmates how you really want to celebrate V-day. Yeah, I get it. Love is great. One slight issue: not all of us are in love.

It's inescapable. You scroll down your insta feed to see post after post dedicated to ‘my fave human xxx’, Old Joemance is inundated with soppy (and often creepy) posts that never seem to include your initials, even Dominos is attentively notifying you that they’ve got the perfect v-day deal for you and bae. This is the real indisputable and exasperating truth: no matter if you’re all loved up or positively lonely, Valentine’s Day consumes everyone. So, for those of us who aren’t scattering the rose petals on the bed this Valentine’s Day, what should we do?

Option number one: go on the pull. With the abundance of dating aids we have all trying to play cupid, surely one of them can shoot an arrow through the heart of your Mr Right, right? Erm, wrong. After scouring Old Joemance in the hope of finding a secret admirer that has been checking out your arse in lectures for the past semester, you reluctantly realise this is no more than a pathetic and naïve fantasy. Even your reliable old sidekick Tinder proves disappointing after hours of stressful swiping and finally finding someone (encouraged by a delusional faith in valentine’s day destiny and the bottle of Echo Falls you’ve managed to chug), you’re forced to admit to yourself that Paul from Tiv probably isn’t the one.

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I’m sure everyone knows option number 2. Bridget Jones and Ben and Jerry’s sound familiar to you? The classic ‘stay-in-order-deliveroo-and-watch-a-romcom-whilst-drowning-your-sorrows-in-wine-and-pizza’. Always a hit. But to be truly honest with ourselves, do we ever go to bed feeling anything more than slightly lighter in pocket, heavier in stomach, a bit sick from the combo of takeaway and booze and, hey guess what, lonelier than ever? Nope, even this classic solution cannot seem to soothe the V-day blues. So if finding a man doesn’t work, and settling for two men called Ben and Jerry is equally useless, what is a poor singleton to do?

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Well, I’d like to raise a glass of cheap wine (or a shot of tequila) to you, and the other 60 million singles out there, and say, screw Saint Valentine! Embrace being single! Next Valentine’s Day, don’t try to pretend the 13th Feb skips straight to the 15th. That perfect Dominos deal for two? Who said you couldn’t finish it yourself? You’ve got no one to impress tonight in your undies so knock yourself out. Valentine’s Day is supposed to be a day to celebrate love, and guess what, being single doesn’t mean you can’t love yourself.