As an event professional and lifestyle blogger, I should be giving you tips on where to take your lover on Valentine’s Day. I shouldn’t however admit that I personally detest the idea of Valentine’s Day.

Don’t get me wrong; I think the sentiment is wonderful. There should be more love in the world, it would most definitely benefit from it. The idea however, of a single day designated to celebrating love, I feel is quite tactless – and that’s without the commercialisation of it all!

I’m sure by this point you’ve assumed and likely concluded that I am quite bitter and of course single?

Single yes, bitter no. To me Valentine’s Day has always been just another day in February  – and although I’m honest about it from the start, it did come as a shock for many ex’s who thought I was joking, only for the day to come and go without much notice from me.

Now I realise that not only do I sound single and bitter, but also cold and cruel, as it appears I’ve deprived them of what should be a wonderful celebration of love; but here’s the thing – why do we not celebrate the love we feel for our partners in those moments where love engulfs us, with the same enthusiasm we give to the 14th February? Think about it, if we all adopted this approach; elements of social culture would be very different to how we know them today.

A Happier World

Husbands would no longer have to live in fear of potentially having misunderstood the subtle hints casually floated since the first day of February. Or even worse, the poor helpless romantics who are lured deeper by St. Valentine’s commercial trappings, which as we all know, can lead to unachievable expectations and further leading onto disappointment and sometimes meritless argument.

Singletons can breathe easy knowing the overwhelming build up leading to the day can’t push them over to the line from blissfully single, to single & lonely – I mean isn’t it bad enough already that we have to endure the dreaded “Pity Face” (that look of genuine concern as if there something is horribly wrong with us) during social situations?

Lastly, lets not forget those who probably suffer the most – the innocents who through nothing other than bad luck find themselves in the land of a new relationship. For them, I believe Valentine’s Day is not unlike the hell that was puberty. Rather than enjoy feeling giddy from the exciting rush fuelled by lust and driven by the pleasures of adventures unknown, they are instead suddenly questioning everything they thought they already understood. We all sadly know what happens next from this point onwards…

Anyway, although the above examples are quite general, stereotypical and verge on cynical; if we isolated each one and measured how much stress and anxiety it can cause, you can start to see why I would rather it didn’t exist at all.

Life can be challenging enough already and to me, Valentine’s Day is a stressful catalyst the world could definitely do without each year. Instead, lets not just honour the tradition of St. Valentine on the 14th February, let’s honour it every time we feel those wonderful, warm feelings of love take hold.

Whether you treat your loved one to dinner, or just take care of the dishes that night, make sure to proudly share and celebrate it with whoever the lucky person is because if there is love, nothing is as dark as it appears.