Getting laid, wine and other reasons single girls should not have hated yesterday…

The Tab’s single columnist Steff Young realises that Valentine’s Day might not have been all bad.


V-Day is over and we’re throwing away the flowers, returning to a world where we don’t need to moan about PDAs – somehow when it’s any other day of the year, couples are a legitimate and acceptable part of society.

You may find it hard to believe, but this year I wasn’t actually that irate about Valentine’s Day, until people started telling me that I should be. Can’t a girl flick through the Ann Summers catalogue without being told she needs to ‘get laid’?

Drinking a bottle of wine is a totally acceptable practice on any other evening, but on Valentine’s Day, it’s clearly a sign that you will be alone forever. Here are some of the things I considered doing this V-Day, all of which I failed to achieve… because I was at work.

 

1. Getting Laid

This may or may not have been an option. Having only ever had one proper one night stand in Amsterdam (different country, different rules), I am embarrassingly naïve as to the ease and etiquette that goes with inviting someone to your house for the sole purpose of awkward and unsatisfactory copulation with no foreplay.

Do they stay over? Do you offer them tea in the morning? Should they take you out for breakfast? I can’t help but feel I’d judge a guy more on whether or not he took sugar in his tea than on his sexual prowess.

So this option soon went out the window.

 

2. Drink a bottle of wine

This is what I did last year. Then I went to the LCR. Then a man proceeded to breakdance on an empty dance floor to impress me and when that (shockingly) didn’t work, began telling me that his wife had died in a way that implied that I was next. I don’t want to step on any toes here so let’s leave it at that shall we…?

 

3. Do something fun and non-V-Day related

See, the problem here is that, once you decide to do something non-Valentine’s Day related, it automatically becomes Valentine’s Day related in your rejection of it. So essentially I have nothing to suggest here!

 

What I actually ended up doing on Valentine’s Day was probably the best thing I could have done. I lived my life the way I would any other day of the year. As did my housemates, as did most of the rest of the world. The only thing more ‘depressing’ than being single on Valentine’s Day is being in a relationship that needs a specific day to make it special.

Going out for a meal with your other half, or with your mates, or receiving a bouquet of roses, or getting so drunk you pass out on the sofa are all fun, special and romantic whatever time of year they happen.

So unless you want to be depressed about the fact that you’re single or treasure your relationship every day of the year, go and act like a normal person by eating a sandwich and doing some work or something.