Valentine’s Day Grump

Posted by Delaine - January 1, 2011 - Grief/ Anger, Surviving - 4 Comments

(A Divorced Reader’s ‘FIRST’ Valentine’s Day after divorce)

I admit it. This Valentine’s Day thing has me rolling my eyes. I don’t want to say it aloud to all my happily married and in-love friends. But all the dreamy romanticism of this holiday makes me want to …well…spew.

I know it’s cause I’m not ready for a relationship. I know it’s cause ‘true love’ is defined to me right now through my relationships with me, my kids and my friends. And I also know it’s cause I’d rather have a man stare into my eyes as he’s tying me up, rather than as he whispers sweet I love you’s.

I can’t help but laugh at my attitude towards Valentine’s Day. It really doesn’t bother me. I figure it’s all just parr for where I’m at on the divorce course. Past Valentine’s Days have been all over the map for me – some fabulous, some dreamy, some heartbreaking, and some alone. At the end of the day, it’s really just a day. So I’m not giving it any more meaning than that; it’s my choice.

I just wish that advertisers would expand their commercial messaging and paraphernalia around Valentine’s Day. Since millions of us are divorced, can they not talk about love more broadly? I mean, ENOUGH with the smooching couples in a heart. ENOUGH with love-sick faces that glow from Cupid’s Golden arrows. Show me a picture of Cupid dipping his arrow in arsenic and doing a bull’s eye in my ex’s forehead, and then maybe I’ll actually want to buy something.