Love

[liv]

This is quite a week for the calendar providing blogging topics, with Chinese New Year, Pancake Day / Mardi Gras / Shrove Tuesday, Ash Wednesday and the dreaded Valentine's Day all in succession. I really do not know what to do with VD. I don't approve of it politically, though I do like going out for nice meals with people I love, and I keep vacillating between (pointedly) ignoring it, attempting to subvert or reclaim it, and just going ahead and celebrating it anyway.

I mean, part of the problem with VD is the honking great cultural message that relationships like mine are important and precious and worthy of celebrating. I really, really don't think I'm in any way superior because I got married to a man and thus have a publicly visible, primary, romantic, dyadic relationship. Indeed I don't even think that relationship is more important than other key relationships in my life, though by the nature of what it is, it takes up a fair amount of my time and has major effects on my lifestyle choices. But society as a whole thinks I'm a winner because I have this relationship. It is absolutely true that I get many direct benefits, as well as meaningless social status, from being married to jack (otherwise I wouldn't have done it!) and to a lesser extent from being married in general, from having a partner who makes me and my desires a high priority in his life.

But this being the case, if I speak disparagingly about VD, if I complain that the idea of Romance puts too much emphasis on heterosexual, public, dyadic relationships, it comes across wrongly because I do in fact have all these benefits. Both jack and I have toyed with the idea of having anti-valentine parties, but it just feels weird to do that when we do in fact have a romantic primary partner. OK, so we don't live together, so we're usually (as this year) physically apart on Valentine's Day, and in some ways I do want to make a point of saying that this is not in fact a tragedy, it's a choice we've made. That's still not really helpful to people who really wish they had someone to send them flowers on Thursday, or people who are forced by dire circumstances (as opposed to pursuing well-paid, satisfying careers) to live apart from their partners.

Because I've been unclear about this before, I want to state upfront that I know full well that getting married was a choice I made, it wasn't just a random piece of luck that "happened" to me. It feels like luck in the sense that it was never my life ambition to get married, I never made any particular effort to look for a partner who would be interested in that kind of relationship. And I take no particular credit for the fact that I found someone who wants to spend his life with me, so in that sense it was lucky; I say this as a counter to the idea that married people are somehow morally superior or more mature than single people or people with other relationship structures. But it was still my choice, a choice I could have rejected.

I seriously, seriously considered not getting married; if you've been reading this journal since 2010 when jack proposed to me you'll have seen me angsting about it. In the end I decided that my relationship with jack looks enough like the socially approved model, being heterosexual, publicly declared, romantic and sexual, dyadic and with the intention of being a lifelong commitment, that choosing not to go through the ceremony wasn't in fact going to do much for equality. I've been debating on Twitter with nanayasleeps about the value of politically asking for opposite sex Civil Partnerships. She takes the view that CPs were just a way of fobbing off Queer people and are nothing but a second-class version of marriage. I feel emotionally, though I can't entirely justify this, that I would like to convert my legal relationship into a Civil Partnership, and therefore I would like the option to be available. nanayasleeps has sort of partly convinced me, though; there isn't a huge amount of benefit in giving up international recognition of my relationship for the sake of nebulous emotional advantages. And I must admit that now same-sex marriage (if not yet fully equal or gender-neutral marriage, grrr) is seriously on the table, it feels a whole lot less like being married is making a big statement about my gender and sexual orientation (and possibly even relationship structure) which I don't necessarily want to be making. That is vastly less important than the rights of all couples to have access to full marriage, of course. Still, my feeling is that making a big fuss of dyadic, romantic, monogamous, lifelong, household- and nuclear family-forming relationships is itself a problem, even though it's an extremely good thing and worth fighting for for that particular relationship structure is increasingly open to same-sex couples.

The same with VD. You're supposed to have one person you want to give traditional love tokens to and go out for a romantic meal with. It's great that we've now realized collectively that that person may be the same sex as you! But that doesn't necessarily fix things for people who are single by choice or by necessity, people whose relationships don't fit into that particular model of Romance, people who in relationships of three, four or more people, people who have more than one partner, people whose sexual partner(s) aren't their primary life partners, people who can't afford to draw the general public's attention to their relationships and I'm sure there's a whole bunch more I've left out. It doesn't help to value friendships and family connections and close-knit communities and online relationships and all other kinds of love. It doesn't help people who are single as adults beyond the age where this is seen as acceptable, people who actually don't have any person as intimately involved in their life as society expects a romantic partner to be.

People whose relationships don't get much social credit, and people who don't have the relationships they want, are likely to find VD upsetting. I'd like to make things better for everybody in that situation, but I don't really have a way to do so, especially considering that I'm part of the problem in some ways. I'm not going to avoid talking about my husband because some people don't have the practical and / or social advantages that I do. After all, one of the big advantages of being in this kind of couple is precisely that jack is a major part of my life; not mentioning him would be like never talking about my job because some people are unemployed. Conversely, ranting about how VD is awful and promotes massive inequalities based on relationship status is itself rather tactless, coming from me.

What I am going to do is to link to kaberett's Not-a-darkroom-orgy love meme. As they say: with the message that monogamous heterosexual relationships are the most important kind of relationship [...] a healthy dose of respect and love might be no bad thing. I am a bit scared of love memes, they seem like a fandom cultural thing that I don't fully understand. I signed up to kaberett's because I know most of the people involved, and some of them are people I love very dearly in ways that don't get the same kind of recognition as loving jack does. People have said incredibly touching things in my thread, but that's not why I'm linking, I just wanted to signal-boost a chance for people to get some love and respect and admiration and positivity that's not full of the subtext that you fail at life if you're not in the right kind of couple situation. I should also note that kaberett is moderating incredibly carefully and sensitively, so it's a lot less of a minefield than anony-memes can be.

Comments

[angelofthenorth]

Thanks for this. I don't have much useful to comment on it, but I did like reading it

[liv]

Thank you for commenting to say so, I find that really encouraging!

[redbird]

A few years ago, I happened to be visiting adrian_turtle on Valentine's Day. She met me at a bookstore and handed me one red rose, from a bouquet that her other partner had sent her for the holiday. That's still well within the romantic pattern and symbolism, but equally clearly breaking the expectations of monogamy or the pretense thereof.

[liv]

That's incredibly sweet! Yay both of you, and thank you for telling that story.

I sometimes do want to subvert one particular aspect of the relationships that are considered romantic, while keeping the overall pattern (because otherwise it's not subverting, it's doing something entirely different). Like having a trad slushy romantic VD date with a woman, or me taking the role of giving gifts and making a fuss over a male partner, or doing a standard gender roles hetero couple thing but with expressions of love personal to us rather than the obvious ones. Giving a rose from another partner's bouquet is beautiful.

[ptc24]

There's someone on IRC who was being ranty about Valentine's Day. However, even if I can see where he is coming from, I see no need to join in with his rant.

I can't say much about having the wrong sort of relationship; on being single, the way I see it, there are two problems. One problem is lacking a partner and the benefits that brings, the second is feeling hurt by the thought of being single. The second... it turns out there are things you can do about that that, beyond shedding your single status. Talking to counsellors helps; it turns out that in at least one case it was possible to do this on the NHS.

With the first problem; well, there are some people who do seem to be better off being single, good luck to them. Artificially inflating the first problem, making it into a complete disaster or a sign of your failure as a human being, is clearly problematic. ISTR seeing a Daily Mail article making the first sort of error. OTOH, denying that there are benefits, asserting that you're better off being single, etc. doesn't help either; some people (often of the non-single variety) seem to think they can make things better by having sour grapes on your behalf. Likewise, it is not reasonable to expect people to react well to being told "it's not a big deal". When a single person points to evidence that being single is associated with unhappiness, trying hard to explain away that evidence is not necessarily the best thing (I know that being unhappy, and many of the causes of unhappiness, contribute to being single); sometimes, validation is required; sometimes, it is all that is required. In short, I think what is required here is an actually realistic sense of proportion about the matter, rather than trying to fix things by artificially inflating or deflating the problem; inflating or deflating the problem for some agenda other than the happiness of single people is really not a good thing, and is unfair.

Personally I think it is best for people to have their celebrations - I never did believe in levelling down. The slightly flippant side of me would like to promote the idea that it is unreasonable to expect people to forgo these things; people should be able to get married even if it is politically inconvenient for them to (be able to) do so. However, this is taking things too far: some people must be expected to forgo these things with something approximating good grace. Otherwise it is possible for a sense of what you are missing out on to degenerate into an unhealthy sense of entitlement. Worrying about whether you have one of these, or might be accused of having one of these, is not fun.

[liv]

Thank you so much for this comment. I have markedly little experience of being single, and none of being single and wishing I had someone, so it's very helpful to me to have some details beyond what I can imagine with just general empathy. Realistic sense of proportion, yes, acknowledging that involuntary singleness can be a problem for some people while not assuming it's an epic disaster.

Regarding celebrations, I think you're right in general. People shouldn't be expected to forego all pleasures just because some (possibly hypothetical) people might be envious, but I think equally sometimes it is right to forego something otherwise enjoyable because it causes harm. It feels to me like VD is somewhere in the grey area between the two; in the best case it can be a relatively private celebration between individuals which they ought to have the right to enjoy, but at the same time the whole media circus around it and the expectations that a certain kind of coupledom should be everyone's life goal really does make the world worse for some people.

[sea_bright]

Out of curiosity, do you have similar qualms about things like Mother's Day and Father's Day? They strike me as analogous in a lot of ways: celebrations of significant relationships that are viewed as somehow the norm, even though many people may not have experienced them in their ideal form, or indeed at all.

For what it's worth, my own view (as a single not-particularly-by-choice-but-not-terribly-unhappy-with-the-situation person) is that it's good to celebrate what's good in one's life, and that doing so doesn't have to imply that other ways of life are therefore not good. There may be occasions when it's tactful not to shout about it, but that's not limited to relationship celebrations. And of course, it's up to the individuals involved to decide how and when (or indeed if) they want to celebrate.

Rather than boycotting existing celebrations, my preference is for creating new ones to celebrate stuff that might otherwise get neglected. I'm very glad Father's Day exists, for example - people often say it's a made-up event that was only created to sell cards, but it does correct an imbalance and give me an opportunity to show my dad that I love him, as well as my mum. And last weekend I went to a Cyril and Methodius Day party, which has now become a long running tradition. Cyril and Methodius's feast day is also 14th February (the party was on Saturday because Thursday is an awkward day for a gathering), and this started out as an anti-Valentine thing/celebration of non-romantic friendship for those who weren't attached. But despite the fact that many of the people attending now are in relationships, we've carried on having the parties, because friendship is still worth celebrating, and parties are fun!

[liv]

Really good question! I think I'm just personally less bothered by Mother's Day and Father's Day because my family never really celebrated them, and I'm not anyone's parent myself. So I've never found myself in a situation where I want to celebrate, but I don't want to make things even worse for people who are excluded from the celebration.

I think the popular cultural view of mothers and maternity can be pretty damaging, yeah. My feeling is that there's less tendency to blame people who don't have good relationships with their mothers / parents (or whose parents are deceased) than to look down on people who don't have an official romantic partner. Though I suppose mothers do come in for a lot of criticism for not expressing their love for their offspring in socially approved ways. I generally don't like enforced and commercialized celebrations, but I feel less conflicted about Mother's Day than VD overall.

I like your creating new celebrations idea; Cyril & Methodius is awesome! Your description makes me feel I could get away with having a Cyril & Methodius party one year, and it wouldn't be resented because I am not in fact single.

[shreena]

I'm not sure I've ever seen much in the way of people looking down on single people. A certain amount of feeling sorry for them and the assumption that clearly they would prefer not to be single, yes, but not "they must be inferior" sort of attitudes.

On the other hand, I feel judged a lot of the time for not having a good relationship with my mother.

[liv]

That's really interesting as an anecdote that doesn't entirely tally with my experience. Maybe I should in fact start boycotting Mother's Day more actively rather than just ignoring it. If I remember when it's on I might make a post about how not everybody has to love their mother.

I am glad that you haven't seen looking down on single people. It may be that stereotypes like "can't get a girlfriend, still lives in his mother's basement" or "bitter man-hater growing old alone with cats" are falling out of the general meme-pool, which I think can only be a good thing.

[pretty_panther]

I agree with so much of this. Not got anything to add but I enjoyed the read :)

[liv]

Aw, thanks for commenting to say you enjoyed the post and agree! It's often a big pain to take the time to do that, but I really appreciate it.

[yalovetz]

I do miss the way we were encouraged to celebrate Valentines Day when I was in primary school - we made cards for any and all of the people we loved and wanted to show affection to. So we made and gave cards to friends and to parents and to extended family. I got lots of cards from classmates and gave plenty too, and it didn't mean anything other than that we liked each other's company and wanted to do something nice for each other. It was a lovely way of celebrating all the important relationships in our lives.

Somehow, by the time we got to secondary school, when romantic relationships entered the picture as a possibility, the other relationships seemed to drop off the radar. :(

[atreic]

Yes, this! I always used to get a v-day card from my mum, and I would send her one.

My model of v-day seems different from Liv's - it's not, in my brain, a day about traditional relationships celebrating themselves openly (although clearly now it has grown to encompass this), it's a day about secret love making secret hints that it exists. It's the anonymous card, the secret bunch of flowers... So I don't think it does, traditionally, at least in my head, celebrate existing romantic relationships that fit obvious models. It celebrates the fact that sometimes love isn't easy and people pine and don't know how to say things and that sometimes people are much fonder of you than you know they are.

[khalinche]

I really love this as an idea, and how you've put it.

[atreic]

I can remember being small (about 8) and making my mum _2_ valentine day cards - one handmade, with deliberately 'childish' handwriting, that I put outside her door, and one shop bought one with my Best Handwriting, that I actually sent through the post. The idea being that the point of v-day was that it was anonymous and confusing and sweet and mum would think she had a secret admirer. With 20 years of hindsight, I have a feeling that even my Best Handwriting did not actually fool her for that long.

[As a grown up I am not sure what I feel about anonymous declarations of secret love. I think they're fun and exciting, but I think they're also a bit confusing, and I hate not knowing things! I think a world where people communicate in a straight forward way about how they feel and what they want is a good one. But, hmm, a secret admirer is still a delicious idea in many ways...]

[khalinche]

How ridiculously cute and thoughtful small atreic was!

[liv]

I concur! I d'awwwww'd a whole lot at reading the description of the two valentines.

[liv]

Anonymous valentines and secret crushes freak me out a bit, probably due to exposure to Far from the madding crowd at an impressionable age. But I think you're right, I think that's what Valentine's Day used to be about, but that would be much harder to commercialize than telling everyone that they must buy their partner expensive gifts or at least flowers and chocolates. I do very much like sometimes love isn't easy and people pine and don't know how to say things and that sometimes people are much fonder of you than you know they are – I could definitely get behind that conception of Valentine's Day!

[emperor]

The other vets at college used to send me an "anonymous" card to mock my singleness.

[liv]

This is because people are RUBBISH and quite capable of turning any kind gesture you could think of into a way of mocking people. Anon messages, even if the anonymity is pretty transparent, don't improve the behaviour of people who would be horrible anyway. Boo them.

[liv]

I definitely like the idea of a festival of liking and affection rather than Romance. And I really like receiving friend-valentines, so I think what I should do, instead of bitching, is get organized about sending them. That would be a good practical way of valuing relationships that don't fit into the traditional romantic couple mould, too.

[emma]

Something I said to someone else asking what Valentine's Day means to people yesterday:

I loved the "secret admirer" cards when I was in school, though it always drove me mad trying to work out who it was :) loved sending them as well to let people I liked know that they were liked (even though I was too shy to let them know who liked them!). I liked the mystery and the thrill that someone somewhere really liked you. Possibly a bit silly and not as useful as discovering a mutual like ;) (I did find it a bit maddening as well... and in hindsight silly as I'm fairly sure I received cards from two boys I had massive crushes on at the time, but would have been mortified to come out and admit that to anyone, and terrified of what might happen if they reciprocated).

I've always liked celebrating it in some token way when in relationships... In my last as I was saying to some others recently it was the full works, roses and chocolates and a deliciously cooked meal (as opposed to overpriced busy restaurants). Being made to feel special and doing the same for someone else is lovely, and doesn't have to be commercial.

This year I'm going clubbing on Friday at a nominally Valentines themed thing so am making a little token of friendship and appreciation for my friends who will be there, and it's doing a reasonably good job at staving off the unhelpful little niggles of feeling a bit single and lonely because it's reminding me of some of the lovely people in my life :)

Written for this post and not that one: As right as it is that I'm single right now, as it was the right decision for me at the right time, and I'm getting quite a lot out of the experience, part of me still longs to find "someone", a person to share life with, who you're special to, who you have all these wonderful feelings for and they have them for you. Although this is all part of the monogamy social construct. There is no one person to fulfil all roles in your life, and I already have some excellent people in my life who I share things with. It's somewhat idealised and fairy-story-like, and I get a bit angry at the concept someone is "less than" or not "whole" if they're single, but at the same time I do really like being in relationships and some of the benefits that come from them.

Somewhat mixed feelings about it, then :) I'm not hugely resentful of all of the couples and bemoaning my existence or anything though. I did have a small wibble the other day when thinking back to this time two years ago, but that's more because what would have been my 2 year anniversary with B just passed, and I was thinking back rather fondly (and telling a friend that when he finds the "right" someone(s) they will be very lucky to have him in their life, as I was). A bit of wistful reminiscing about things that didn't work out.

[liv]

Nice to see you, and I really like this long, thoughtful comment! Secret admirer stuff doesn't sit well with me because I really like direct, honest communication and I'm scared of horrible misunderstandings. And also because I was always the kid who got left out when people were exchanging stuff like that. But if it's done in a spirit of fun rather than being taken too seriously I can definitely see the appeal.

I completely agree it's possible to have a thoughtful, personally meaningful Valentine's Day celebration even if you're being bombarded with "buy tacky shit" messages. I mean, I wouldn't say that people shouldn't celebrate Christmas just because there's lots of advertising encouraging people to spend money they can't afford on stuff they don't want. I definitely do like making my partners feel special.

It's great that you're giving your friends tokens of affection and making plans to enjoy a themed event even though you're single. I hope you have a brilliant time. It's also good to know you're appreciating being single and have excellent people. I think it's understandable to feel wistful for relationships that didn't work out, and perfectly reasonable to be self-aware about enjoying being in a relationship. Yay for you, and I'm sorry for the negative parts of your mixed feelings.

[blue_mai]

huh, weird. I was sure I posted a long comment ages ago, well maybe about a week. but it isn't here! hurmph.
d'oh! I found it on the other post...