Valentine’s Day Isn’t the Worst Day of the Year to Be Single
Thanks to my single and cynical exterior, people tend to assume I am a classic Valentine’s Day hater. In reality, my feelings re: V-Day typically range from neutral to “Idk, it’s cute!” regardless of my relationship status. According to my records, I have been single for roughly 25 of the 27 Valentine’s Days I’ve spent on Earth, and the last time I remember feeling any type of way about it was sophomore year of high school, when my talking stage crush didn’t send me a rose in the student council fundraiser (which, yes, I am still mad about).
Otherwise, Valentine’s Day has never been a big trigger for any kind of single self-pity parade—in large part because the vast majority of the time, I genuinely enjoy being single. I put a high premium on my freedom to exercise my romantic and sexual autonomy, to build a life (and/or fuck it up) on my terms and mine alone, and, of course, to indulge in all my weird secret single behaviors in peace. So if you were hoping to catch me wallowing and wishing I’d given it all up to marry my college Air Force boyfriend and become a military bride this February 14, I’m afraid I can’t help you.
On my birthday, on the other hand….
The 69th day of the year, a divinely ordained birthday for a sex writer, falls roughly three weeks after Valentine’s Day—which means my requisite pre-birthday mental breakdown always rears its head right around this time. While there are a lot of things to dread about a birthday—reminders of the relentless passage of time, the inevitability of death, getting a “Hey! Happy birthday, aha” text from your ex—feeling suddenly weird about being single is among the worst and most confusing symptoms for me. And it would seem I’m not alone.
If you, like me, have had your brain chemistry permanently altered by watching Sex and the City from a young age, you may recall that even Carrie Bradshaw, the inventor of being Single and Fabulous, finds herself feeling Single and Desperate after no one shows up for her 35th birthday party (where she is then forced to pay for her own cake and proceeds to drop it in the street while getting yelled at by a bunch of construction workers).
“I hate myself a little for saying this,” she confesses post-birthday disaster, “but it felt really sad not to have a man in my life who cares about me.”
The admission itself, the feeling really sad not to have a man in your life who cares about you, was something I could somehow relate to even as a teenager who already feared I was destined for a lifetime of single birthdays. In more recent years, though, it’s the pre-confession “I hate myself a little for saying this” that I find more poignant.
For a certain brand of modern, liberal-minded women—the kind Carrie and crew were meant to represent for their generation—something about wanting to tie your life to a man’s can’t help but feel embarrassing. Dated. Adolescent, even. The last time we wanted boyfriends, we were high schoolers who also wanted driver’s licenses and to drink warm beer in someone’s basement. Finally being freed from this all-consuming desire to “find a man” feels like growth, maturity. Unlike former classmates who stayed close to home and reproduced with locals, we’ve mercifully evolved beyond this juvenile need to prop our lives up on the shoulders of a man. For this kind of woman, the kind I have become, “feeling really sad not to have a man in my life who cares about me” can’t help but feel like a form of regression. Like admitting defeat. Because for this kind of woman, worse than the shame of being single is the shame of being ashamed of it. Of people catching you wanting something you may never get to have. Something you swore you’d never let yourself want again.
The thing is, my 28th birthday is just around the corner, and I do have a man in my life who cares about me. No, he’s not my boyfriend. In fact, he’s someone else’s boyfriend.
Last year in my “Sex at 27” column, I wrote about waking up alone in a hotel room the morning after my 26th birthday and trying really hard “not to feel weird about it.” In an inexplicable stroke of confidence at odds with my typical fearful-avoidant tendencies, I’d asked Adam*, a man in an open relationship whom I’d only recently started dating, to spend my birthday with me.
It was doomed from the start. I showed up late and frazzled, he showed up fresh off a stomach flu, and the weather was abysmal. Dinner was rushed because we had a show to catch, and then the show was rushed because we had to get to the hotel and have sex before he was due back home to his girlfriend. I caught his stomach flu and woke up the next day convinced that the only thing worse than not having a man in your life on your birthday was borrowing someone else’s.
Flash-forward two years and many martini-fueled adventures in non-monogamy, and Adam and I will be celebrating my birthday together next month for the third year in a row—and I will not be feeling even a little bit weird about it. The infamous stomach flu has become an inside joke that I’ve publicly referenced in writing twice now (sorry, Adam) and the umbrella he let me steal from the hotel that first rainy birthday is now part of a sacred collection of seemingly meaningless objects he’s placed in my life that mean everything to me.
He still has a girlfriend. I am still single—and I have a man in my life who loves me. Because sometimes, if you’re very lucky, you get to have your birthday cake and eat it, too.
At the end of that Sex and the City episode, after Carrie makes her confession, Charlotte issues what may be one of the most defining lines of the entire series: “Maybe we can be each other’s soulmates. And then we could just let men be these great, nice guys to have fun with.”
My own happy ending to this particular episode of my life is a little less gendered and a little more polyamorous, but I think the sentiment is the same. Love comes into your life (and celebrates your birthday with you) in all forms, if you let it.
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