Livre d'Or

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.