The Real Victims of Valentine's Day? New Couples
Unless you count the Super Bowl, Valentine’s Day is the only major holiday that comes with explicit winners and losers. Couples in love get rewarded with fancy dinners and flowers, while singles get penalized for their loneliness with pitying texts from relatives and heartbreaking husband reveals from gym crushes.
But what about the people in the middle — pairs just starting to explore a connection, who are suddenly forced to publicly celebrate it?
In this Super Bowl of love, if established couples are the victorious Eagles and singles are the defeated Chiefs, these in-betweeners are the Drakes: unwilling participants dragged into the festivities for the purposes of humiliation.
Okay, that was harsh. No one wants to be compared to Drake. But you get my point: the hardest spot to be on Valentine’s Day is in a delicate new relationship with everything to lose. If you're lucky enough to be seeing someone new, but unlucky enough to do it under February 14's looming shadow, here are a few survival tips.
When you’re not sure what you are
At the moment, I'm five dates in with a lovely guy. We’re cute together. We’re compatible. But one thing we are not is a couple — which wasn’t a problem until this month, when people suddenly started asking what we were doing for the big day.
Because even when you're both happy keeping things loose, Valentine's Day forces the issue — like a waiter who asks upfront if you’ll be paying together. Or a friend who plays you their favorite movie just to scrutinize your reaction to every joke. What should be effortlessly enjoyable suddenly feels like a test: are we at that point yet? Is The Big Lebowski funny?
If you make a big romantic night of it before you’ve even decided you’re together, you’re letting Hallmark dictate your life. But if you avoid it completely, it becomes the elephant in the room… and you’ll be forced to wonder who they are going to spend that day with.
The solution: Acknowledge the big day — but as a universal holiday, in the same way your office sets out candy, or your friends send you chain texts saying "👨🏻DADDY CUPID💘💘 is 💦cumming💦 for you⚠️‼️." Wish the person you’re seeing a Happy Valentine’s Day without asking them to be your Valentine.
You can even spend the evening together — just don’t take them out on the town among candles and clinking champagne glasses. Stay in and watch a romcom. Or, better yet, a horror movie. Or split the difference with Jennifer’s Body.
When you’re newly official
It’s even tougher in the early stages of a new relationship when you want everything to be perfect.
One year, I made things official with a guy on literally February 10th, after a protracted will-they/won’t-they courtship that was... not as cute as they make it look on TV. I was thrilled we were finally boyfriends, but I also 100% assumed we would skip Valentine’s Day.
Until he texted me an OpenTable invitation. For the night of February 14. For Omakase. Four dollar signs.
Clearly, we were doing Valentine’s Day. I panicked, assumed he had something amazing planned, and impulse bought a way too expensive gift.
The night of the dinner came, and I presented him with a watch. And he presented me... with nothing but a sheepish apology. It was impossible to convince him this was fine — that I only bought my gift in self-defense against whatever thoughtful thing I feared he’d bought — and it was awkward all night.
The solution: We had the right idea by making a moment of our first V-Day together. But I should have known: in the honeymoon phase, it’s the little things that are most delightful: a kiss hello, a phone lighting up with their name, a look on the face of your most hated rival learning you locked it down.
The same goes for gifts and restaurants: steer towards sweet and away from expensive. If they like Italian, take them to a quiet neighborhood spot, not a Michelin-starred bistro. If they like cooking, buy them some fancy salt, not a Le Creuset. They'll appreciate the gesture no matter what, and there's far less risk of a drastically uneven exchange. Just don't blindly assume you're on the same page. Especially...
When you’re gay
Actually, that isn’t the end of the Omakase story. Because while my boyfriend didn’t get me a wrapped gift, he did have a surprise in store: tickets to a post-dinner circuit party.
This was so much worse than getting nothing. I got him a watch (!!) and he got me a guarantee our romantic evening was going to be spent soaked in other men’s sweat. (To be fair, his tickets did come with neon green wristbands, so I guess we both got some sweet wristwear.)
I was insulted because, in my mind, coupling up meant winding down that kind of activity. But then I realized: we knew plenty of serious couples, even married ones, for whom that wasn’t true.
The fact is, for LGBTQ+ people, there’s always an inherent tension between doing things the traditional (read: heteronormative) way and doing things the queer way: “For Valentine’s Day this year, dear, are we exchanging flowers, or are we inviting our third?“
Our “lifestyle” is all about bucking norms — so how was he supposed to know which norms I wanted to keep?
The solution: The beauty of being queer is you get to make your own rules. You just have to actually make them. If things are good enough to be declaring yourselves a couple, they should be good enough that you can directly ask, in advance: what kind of night are we looking to have? What’s romantic to us? In our case, both of our issues would have been solved with some clearer communication (a problem that persisted and killed the relationship FYI, happy Valentine's Day!!!).
So that’s the boringly predictable answer: this Valentine’s Day, speak from the heart. Be straight up about what you want. Or, if it’s too much pressure, just bail and pretend to have the flu. It's going around right now. Problem solved!
