Valentine’s Day isn’t just for couples. Instead of feeling depressed and wallowing in self pity, singles should celebrate and enjoy the day, a relationship expert says.
Forty-three percent of US residents over 18 years old, or 95.9 million people, are unmarried. And more than 61 percent have never been married, figures from the US Census Bureau show.
So even if a significant other isn’t in the picture, singles are not really alone on Valentine’s Day.
PHOTO: AFP
“Make fun of the assumption that people need to be coupled,” said Tony Jurich, a professor of family studies and human services at Kansas State University.
Instead of a solitary binge of chocolates, or bemoaning the lack of flowers or a card, Jurich advises singles to get together at a restaurant to celebrate Valentine’s Day, or even throw an Un-Valentine’s Day party at home.
“Make light of it, kind of get even a little bit with the assumptions. Celebrate your singleness together,” Jurich added.
More than 152 million Valentine’s Day cards are exchanged on Feb. 14, according Hallmark, which offers 2,000 Valentine’s Day cards.
Not all of them will be to spouses and partners. Mothers receive a sizable portion of cards.
There are also anti-Valentine’s Day cards, T-shirts and other items available for those who have strong feelings about the day and want to express their sentiments.
Even couples who celebrate the day are planning to do less this year. Two-thirds of Americans questioned in a Zogby Interactive survey said they expected to spend less than US$50 this year, compared to 7 percent who said they would be more generous and dispense with US$100.
A quarter of people in the US intend to spend nothing.
Although Valentine’s Day is the second-biggest holiday for giving greeting cards in the US, and is celebrated in other countries including Canada, Mexico, Britain, France and Australia, many nations do not mark the day, which according to Roman legend originated in the third century.
It wasn’t until about 487 that Pope Gelasius declared Feb. 14 as St Valentine’s Day in honor of the martyr Valentinus.
For the recently single or those who take the lack of a significant other to heart, Jurich suggested spending the day with friends who are happy with their single status, or someone who has just escaped from a miserable relationship.
“If you can laugh at Valentine’s Day and laugh at the ‘misery’ of being single, you will give yourself distance — and distance will help you stay out of the self-pity thing,” Jurich said.
DEATH CONSTANTLY LOOMING: Decades of detention took a major toll on Iwao Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers describing him as ‘living in a world of fantasy’ A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded US$1.44 million in compensation, an official said yesterday. The payout represents ￥12,500 (US$83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
Indonesia’s parliament yesterday amended a law to allow members of the military to hold more government roles, despite criticisms that it would expand the armed forces’ role in civilian affairs. The revision to the armed forces law, pushed mainly by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s coalition, was aimed at expanding the military’s role beyond defense in a country long influenced by its armed forces. The amendment has sparked fears of a return to the era of former Indonesian president Suharto, who ex-general Prabowo once served and who used military figures to crack down on dissent. “Now it’s the time for us to ask the
The central Dutch city of Utrecht has installed a “fish doorbell” on a river lock that lets viewers of an online livestream alert authorities to fish being held up as they make their springtime migration to shallow spawning grounds. The idea is simple: An underwater camera at Utrecht’s Weerdsluis lock sends live footage to a Web site. When somebody watching the site sees a fish, they can click a button that sends a screenshot to organizers. When they see enough fish, they alert a water worker who opens the lock to let the fish swim through. Now in its fifth year, the
RSS