A FRESH TAKE ON VALENTINE’S DAY
This was a difficult post for me to write–it took me a significant amount of time to even decide on an opening sentence, which I think is a suitable analogy for the ambivalence and uncertainty I feel about this topic and by extension, writing about it. It’s Valentine’s day in a few days and I knew I wanted to address it in some way, especially since it is such a big profit holiday in the blogging industry– I have received several emails about how best to milk it. I am choosing though, to spend my internet space talking about romantic love and the fictions that fuel the Valentine’s day industry rather than giving outfit ideas or ‘valentine’s day looks’. I might be back to that next year though; I will still have bills to pay.
In writing this, I did a bit of a Google search because I was curious about how other people wrote about romantic love, especially when it came to the dreaded ‘millennials.’ The essays were often contradictory in their conclusions, some talking about how open, honest and committed millennial relationships were, others expressing a deep dissatisfaction with millennial approaches to selecting partners or marriage. From reading all those articles, I figured since even science/sociology is so confused about what love looks like in this generation, the best I can offer is my perspective and hope it’s relatable or enjoyable to read. Anyway, long intro but here’s how I feel about romantic love, Valentine’s Day, and romance culture. (Disclaimer that this perspective is informed by my life experiences so do with what you will.)
I was raised by a single mother, the most formidable and hilarious woman I know/my favorite human in the world, and she taught me by example to be fiercely independent and strong. When I was younger, I watched all the regular Disney movies and romcoms (She’s the Man is a forever classic) and like other girls my age, I passively learned that romantic love was this absolute bliss that required you to simply meet eyes with a stranger hunk from across the room and instantly know that they were the love of your life. This love of your life would also be the only important love in your life– you would willingly sacrifice career, health, and friends for them. Somewhere in the back of my mind I just accepted that that must be true.
But, my everyday life watching my mom and my aunts navigate difficult situations and everything else life threw at them with us, their children, and each other as support systems challenged that. When I was old enough to appreciate how much work my mom and aunts had put into loving us, their family, intentionally, I just knew that the story I believed as a little girl that I needed a Prince Charming, and he would be the all and everything of my existence, just could not be true. I could not reconcile the woman my mother had raised me to be, and the woman she was very much fulfilled in being, with the idea of dependence on a male romantic interest to complete me. (The insidiousness of the passive heteronormativity is significant as well but I will get into that in a later blog post.)
Entirely unrelated cute pic of me
As I have grown up, college and other life events forcing me to decide the woman I want to be and go through the painful process of becoming her, I have settled into a confidence that romantic love is one of many loves humans are privileged to enjoy, and is not somehow worth more than any others. I think often, we subconsciously think of our lives as checklists- school, job, marriage, house, kids, work till I retire. (I think it’s changing with this generation, but the inclination does still exist) In arranging this checklist, we also assign something of a hierarchy so that, for instance, your college degree is only as important as the job it can get you. Marriage or finding a life partner is a higher achievement than a job, and so on. The key here being though, that marriage is above job, and marriage is also the foundational piece for house, kids, work till I retire, travel the world/grow old on front porch with spouse. We condition ourselves to derive personal value from romantic relationships- why the question ‘why are you single’ will never not annoy me- as though ourselves as we are are not enough, or the network of family or friends or other mutually supportive relationships we have are not enough. We somehow will always need the stamp of being a boyfriend, girlfriend, partner, to let the world know that there is nothing wrong with us, and we are indeed interesting and valuable individuals. I quite simply, disagree.
I will definitely add that I know, rather intimately, the feeling of needing a boost of validation from a romantic relationship. I know the sting of reckless rejection, and the soft letting down of someone who just isn’t that into you. Being black in America, and in the largely white and wealthy environments that I am typically in, I know the feeling of asking myself if there was something wrong with me because my phone wasn’t blowing up with people checking for me. I know the feeling of wondering if someone liked me because I was foreign to everything they knew, or because I was me. I have learned to work through that, and to know that how I am accepted or not in a space is not a determinant of my worth- and by extension that the romantic interest I do or do not generate is not a signifier of my worth either.
I know that I have my own baggage to work through- the word partner does not form on my lips without much resistance, and I have only been able to refer to people I have dated as boyfriends years after the fact. I know that I could be better about my commitment in romantic relationships. I know also, however, that I will not expect less from or take more negativity in my romantic relationships than any other ones simply for the prize of being a significant other. Often, we treat romantic relationships as if they are themselves the prize, not the compatibility, support, love and care that we give and take in them as we do in all other relationships.
Valentine’s Day, to me, is a good time to take stock of your relationships romantic and otherwise and think honestly whether these relationships build or diminish you. It’s a good time to call your best friend you haven’t texted since you met Josh the super cute Econ major last semester. It’s a good time to remember that partners are great, but they don’t define you. And neither does the absence of one. Rather than spending the day with chocolates and fancy dates that sellotape an incompatible, barely happy, but-at-least-still-a-relationship relationship together, build the courage to want better for yourself and actively seek it. Or, spend the day letting your significant others know how much you care about them in a grand romantic gesture. I think what’s important is knowing that at the end of the day, you are a 100%, not a 50% looking for its complement (paraphrased wisdom from Jadan Smith).
Entirely unrelated cute pic of me
As I have grown up, college and other life events forcing me to decide the woman I want to be and go through the painful process of becoming her, I have settled into a confidence that romantic love is one of many loves humans are privileged to enjoy, and is not somehow worth more than any others. I think often, we subconsciously think of our lives as checklists- school, job, marriage, house, kids, work till I retire. (I think it’s changing with this generation, but the inclination does still exist) In arranging this checklist, we also assign something of a hierarchy so that, for instance, your college degree is only as important as the job it can get you. Marriage or finding a life partner is a higher achievement than a job, and so on. The key here being though, that marriage is above job, and marriage is also the foundational piece for house, kids, work till I retire, travel the world/grow old on front porch with spouse. We condition ourselves to derive personal value from romantic relationships- why the question ‘why are you single’ will never not annoy me- as though ourselves as we are are not enough, or the network of family or friends or other mutually supportive relationships we have are not enough. We somehow will always need the stamp of being a boyfriend, girlfriend, partner, to let the world know that there is nothing wrong with us, and we are indeed interesting and valuable individuals. I quite simply, disagree.
I will definitely add that I know, rather intimately, the feeling of needing a boost of validation from a romantic relationship. I know the sting of reckless rejection, and the soft letting down of someone who just isn’t that into you. Being black in America, and in the largely white and wealthy environments that I am typically in, I know the feeling of asking myself if there was something wrong with me because my phone wasn’t blowing up with people checking for me. I know the feeling of wondering if someone liked me because I was foreign to everything they knew, or because I was me. I have learned to work through that, and to know that how I am accepted or not in a space is not a determinant of my worth- and by extension that the romantic interest I do or do not generate is not a signifier of my worth either.
I know that I have my own baggage to work through- the word partner does not form on my lips without much resistance, and I have only been able to refer to people I have dated as boyfriends years after the fact. I know that I could be better about my commitment in romantic relationships. I know also, however, that I will not expect less from or take more negativity in my romantic relationships than any other ones simply for the prize of being a significant other. Often, we treat romantic relationships as if they are themselves the prize, not the compatibility, support, love and care that we give and take in them as we do in all other relationships.
Valentine’s Day, to me, is a good time to take stock of your relationships romantic and otherwise and think honestly whether these relationships build or diminish you. It’s a good time to call your best friend you haven’t texted since you met Josh the super cute Econ major last semester. It’s a good time to remember that partners are great, but they don’t define you. And neither does the absence of one. Rather than spending the day with chocolates and fancy dates that sellotape an incompatible, barely happy, but-at-least-still-a-relationship relationship together, build the courage to want better for yourself and actively seek it. Or, spend the day letting your significant others know how much you care about them in a grand romantic gesture. I think what’s important is knowing that at the end of the day, you are a 100%, not a 50% looking for its complement (paraphrased wisdom from Jadan Smith).
