Single on Valentine’s Day? Pic: Sifu Renka
If you woke up today feeling lonely, hopeless and single, then today is your day, my friend.
February 15 is Singles’ Awareness Day when citizens of the Kingdom of Singledom can bask in meals-for-one and reminisce about the Valentine’s Days gone by when they were deluged with red balloons and heart-shaped chocolates. This year, if you received a card signed with a surreptitious ‘Love from ? xxx’, it was probably from some kind-hearted soul, likely to be your grandmother, who like everyone, is aware that you’re single.
The purpose of Singles’ Awareness Day, or S.A.D (how unfortunate) is to comfort “single people who are sick of feeling left out on Valentines Day”.
The day was originally marked on February 14 until the organisers rightly realised how depressing that was and moved it a day later. As if that’s much better. Surely a sunny day in June would be more appropriate?
ELL asked two of its single reporters to write about how they feel having a whole international holiday in honour of their negative Facebook relationship status.
Jack Simpson
Jack Simpson
For the first time in three years I am going to be a single people this Valentine’s Day. I know what you are thinking. One look at the picture of me above and you probably said to yourself, ‘with a face like that, how the hell is this guy single?!’ but, alas, just last month my girlfriend of two and a half years, and I, decided to go our separate ways.
And my new single status has given me a lot more time to think. I’ve covered all the big ones, the meaning of life? What to have for dinner? Who would win in a fight between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone?
I’ve even thought about Singles’ Awareness Day. And after thinking about it long and hard, I came up with one conclusion. Isn’t February 15 a bloody stupid time to have a day celebrating being single. Anyone with ten pence of sense knows that in the ranking of terrible days for single people to exist, February 15 has to be up there.
If February 14 is filled with people doing ‘nice couplely things’ together, February 15 is filled with people telling you about them:
Colleague: Oh I had a really great Valentines. First we went for a drink on the Southbank…..
Me: “Oh that’s great I’m really glad for you. I need to go now.”
Colleague: Then he took me to this lovely restaurant. Trevor pulled the chair out for me – he’s really chivalrous like that – He got me a rose, which was pretty cute…….”
Me: “Sounds like you had a lovely night. I seriously need to go though.”
Colleague: Then he took me to the theatre. We went to see that play with who’s his face. I think he has a brother, or it might have been a sister, anyway he……
Me: “Look I don’t know if you know but today I am celebrating Single’s Awareness Day. I am supposed to be rejoicing in the fact that I don’t have a girlfriend. I can’t really do that with you giving me every fucking detail of your ‘romantic’ evening with Trevor, who lets be honest, probably paid for all of these things because he was hoping to get more than just a kiss on the cheek at the end of the night.”
Ok, maybe a bit strong, but there is a simple solution to avoid situations like this and ensure Single’s Awareness Day is not spoilt by tales of romance from friends and acquaintances.
It’s simple. Move Single’s Awareness Day two days forward. If there is any day of the year that those who are single hold the upper hand over those who are not, it has to be February 13.
If you are single on February 13, you don’t have to worry about scrambling around Lewisham Shopping Centre for that last minute present, you don’t have to listen to that restauranteur on the other end of the line tell you smugly, ‘We are fully booked, it is Valentine’s Day after all’, and you don’t have to live with the knowledge that whatever you get your girlfriend, no matter how big, she will inevitably be disappointed.
So I call on you Singles’ Awareness Day organisers! Take notice of my words and make that change. SAD should not be a day ruined with tales of candles, restaurants and over-blown romantic gestures. SAD should be a day when singles can truly feel smug about being unattached. SAD should be on February 13.
Laura Raphael
Laura Raphael
My name is Laura and I am a single. I have 46 days of relationship sobriety. I first discovered I had a problem at New Years when I got dumped over champagne at midnight. The worst part? I had just spent a three figure sum on six months worth of waxes, and to add insult to injury, Cameron Diaz came out a couple of weeks later saying the “all off” was no longer in fashion.
Today you are supposed to pity my plight, as it is Singles Awareness Day. Much like the other 364 days of the year when you will invariably throw me a consolatory “don’t worry, you’ll find Mr Right soon” or “how are you single?!”. Oh stop it, no really. I don’t see why being single is seen as a negative or why loving it is a cliche.
Take Channel 4’s First Dates for example, the premise for the uninitiated is that the good old, up for anything general public, apply online to go on a first date onscreen, and we the viewers watch the awkwardness unfold in all its glory. If only Attenborough did the voiceover. OK, it was designed to be car crash TV, but actually the most humbling thing about it was Ben and Regan. Ben was worried about how to break the fact he was born without any fingers on his left hand to his date, while Regan admitted she had “more front than Blackpool” due to a troubled childhood.
Let’s face it none of us are perfect, and it takes balls to open up in a relationship but also to go it alone. And you know what, the most important relationship is the one you have with yourself, there is no shame in that or being single as a matter of fact. By far the best piece of post break up advice I received was: “what you need is a Beyonce moment”. Now, not all of us have the booty, or nerve, to take to a neon roller rink in hot pants, but strut your stuff singles, after all our day has truly come.
