Navigating Valentine's Day

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Valentine’s Day brings up a range of difficult feelings for lovers and the lovelorn alike. These are qualitatively different feelings: For lovers, perhaps the weight of expectation, worries about a love which is not shaped exactly as you imagined, or quiet niggles or uncertainty about the person you have found yourself loving. For the lovelorn, worries about love not being found, sorrows about relationships past, and envy as you imagine lovers everywhere curled up together, strongly feeling the pains of loneliness and worries that everyone else, everywhere, has this love thing figured out.

While the psychological processes of the loved and the lovelorn may be somewhat different, at the core of the emotions and worries are a range of common psychological tendencies.

Comparisons

One of the more difficult patterns at social times of the year involves the tendency to compare ourselves with other people. Social media makes this very easy, as you can easily compare other people’s lives with what you have, forgetting that you might be comparing your one life with hundreds of comparators. Fuhr, Hautzinger and Meyer (2015) found that upward social comparisons (i.e., comparisons to those we perceive might be doing better than us) reduces our mood, while downward comparisons might work to bolster our mood.

As a social being, you likely use the barometer of other people to check if you are indeed doing OK, and this can be problematic when you perceive that everyone else is doing better than you in certain ways—either by being coupled up, or more happily coupled up. While you could try to manage your mood by engaging in downward comparisons, it might be more adaptive to recognise that social media selectively catalogues a few highlighted moments of people’s lives but leaves out all the messy imperfect moments and emotions and is thus not a good reflection of reality.

Unhelpful thinking patterns

We all have certain thinking styles or cognitive biases. A common one involves all-or-nothing thinking, such as “I am the only person alone today”, or “everyone else’s partner bought them flowers”. It is common to catastrophise (“I will always be alone”, “if they didn’t get me a present, they don’t love me”), filter out the positive (such as forgetting the things your partner does for you, and noticing the ways in which they fail), set exaggerated expectations or be rigid in your thinking (“if dinner isn’t perfect, it will be the end of the world”), disqualify the positive (forgetting the ways in which you might have rich, fulfilling lives and relationships—focusing only on the fact that you are not partnered up) or emotional reasoning (“I feel lonely and sad and think that no one will ever love me, and therefore this must be true”).

It is important to remember that thoughts and emotions are closely linked, such that if you habitually have thoughts which may be unrealistic or which discount salient information, you may start to experience difficulties with mood. It is important to monitor this process during times such as the holiday season and occasions like Valentine’s Day, as it is easy to engage in unhelpful thinking, such as believing that you are the only person who might be feeling lonely.

Difficulties managing emotion

When difficult or strong emotions come up, it can be difficult to know how to manage them. Common emotions which might arise at this time involve uncertainty, worry, loneliness, sadness, despair, or confusion. People often find it difficult to experience aversive emotions, and you might find yourself avoiding feelings by pushing them away or trying to detach from them. Sometimes people sink into feelings and give in completely, neglecting to recognise that feelings are just a biochemical process, not objective reality.

When strong feelings arise, it is helpful to name them, as naming a feeling often makes it easier to process, to use feelings as information (e.g., perhaps intense sadness as you think of your relationship means that you should assess whether your relationship is meeting your needs) and to soothe the feeling in some way (such as speaking to your partner about your expectations and desires for the day, or by crying to express sadness).

Equally, if difficult feelings persist for too long and become unhelpful, it can be helpful to try to shake them by doing something to create an emotional state which is the opposite of the one you are feeling (e.g., by volunteering to help someone else if you feel lonely, or by watching a comedy if you feel sad). This practice is a skill called ‘opposite action’, derived from Marsha Linehan’s dialectical behavioural therapy, and is an excellent way of regulating emotion if you find yourself so entrenched in a difficult feeling that you start to feel swamped.

It can be helpful to remember that Valentine’s Day is overall a commercial enterprise, and that relationships and love can take many forms across your lifespan. Relational health, community , and belonging are not defined by what occur on one day alone, or by engagement in one type of relationship.