Radical Pleasure: How to Reconceptualize Valentine’s Day, Love, and Romance

Why self-love isn’t the absence of desire for another person

February comes in with a flurry of paper hearts and roses, everything awash with pink and red. The lovers of the world swallow down chalky conversation hearts and cheap chocolate packaged with cartoonish pairings like salt and pepper, avocado and toast, or coffee and milk. Hotel rooms sell out and the morning after the cleaning staff sweep up bushels of rose petals and pop balloons floating toward the ceiling. Dining rooms and restaurants across the world flicker in candlelight and tables are set for two. And it is all beautiful.

Even if I joke that February 14th is Singles Awareness Day, I’m not one of those unattached people who grow angry at the loud expectation that this day for lovers is celebrated by everyone. There are those who complain the day is strictly a money grab and true love gets celebrated year-round outside of the spotlight of this holiday. What isn’t a money grab, though? The commercialization of love and relationships is everywhere. Whether it’s family, a friend, or a lover, it doesn’t matter. There’s a commercial and a social expectation for every connection you may have.

By the time you read this, the explosion of love and the complaints about its noise will have passed and we’ll all be back tucked away into the interiors of our hearts. I’m not sure how I will have spent the day. I likely ordered dinner and maybe had a drink alone. I know that I will not have watched sappy rom coms or texted an ex. What I’m sure of is that I will have had a little bit of a cry and a little bit of a wallow in my feelings about being single. Not as some kind of pity party but more of an acknowledgement of what I’m feeling and a reminder that it’s okay to feel this way.

In recent years, the commercialization of holidays—and what we are supposed to feel because of them—has started to be considered a little more closely by the people selling us the goods they tell us we need. A few weeks out from most major holidays emails begin to flood inboxes reminding consumers they can opt out of receiving marketing messages about Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and other celebrations that may strike a chord in someone wrestling with loneliness and loss.

I haven’t opted out because I love a good deal, but I appreciate the sentiment anyway. I take these emails as a reminder to be gentle with myself and to take what space and grace I need as it comes. In this instance I don’t mind the emails or the paper hearts. Instead, I choose to stay away from social media on those days relationships are at the forefront. I can be happy that my family and friends are loved and cared for. I have genuine joy in knowing that in the wide expanse of the world, they have someone to walk with them. But that doesn’t stop my heart from kicking because the same is not true for me. So, instead of casting my single shadow over their light, I take a step back and love on myself a little bit more.

Over the years, I’ve learned self-love isn’t the absence of desire. There’s no need to pretend that craving intimate, human connection is a character flaw or a sign that you have yet to properly learn to love yourself. There’s this popular idea that single people must survive a gauntlet without admitting the desire to be coupled. “Date yourself” articles and short videos proclaim: Romanticize your life until the romance finds you! Love will happen when you aren’t looking so just live in the meantime! I’d be a liar if I didn't tell you that I’ve tried to cheat the system a few times and self-love my way into a man. It clearly didn’t work.

But love is an action. For yourself first and foremost. This advice about how to be patient and hopeful all seems to hinge on the notion that single people are just living in limbo hoping that eventually they’ll be plucked out of stasis and into the arms of the love of their life. There is always an assumption that the reason singles have yet to meet someone is that we’ve yet to unlock the parts of us that need to be fixed. That there is inner work to be done that makes us unable to be good partners or if we just do all the shadow work and love ourselves just a smidge harder Cupid will finally take proper aim.

Self-love, and self-care, for me is about desire and acknowledgment. I can desire all the syrupy sweetness of Valentine's Day and feel a dip in my spirit when reality is clear there are no declarations of devotion or dinners on the horizon. I can do this without giving up the joy of knowing how to please and pleasure myself all alone on any other day.

Romanticizing your life and dating yourself isn’t a bad thing, don’t get me wrong. The why is where things get a little bit snagged. If the reason you are kind to yourself; if the reason you explore the world; if the reason you make an effort to fully embrace who you are is so that you can find a partner, then it's bound to fail. What part of that type of living honors you as a being worthy of all that is good, both internally and externally? I don’t have to be perfect to find love. I don’t have to be fully healed. What I have to be willing to do is take an honest look at myself and know that even in my ever-evolving self I can desire to be touched, adored, and held.

In this knowledge is the pleasure. There is pleasure in the long term by learning what boundaries to set for myself and potential loves. There is even more in taking the time to know what makes me feel good as an individual so if, or when, the time comes I know how to express that to another person. Each time I discover some new bit of peace or joy I set up another experience I can share with someone else. There is no waiting to do any of this nor is there any part of doing so that guarantees me a partner.

I choose not to opt out of life in the meantime. There’s nothing to gain from me shying away from what I want even if I’m not sure I will ever actually get it. So, I acknowledge the day society deems for declarations of romance and infatuation like a little kid passing out jagged construction paper hearts to a classroom and peering into my decorated shoebox to see if there’s something there for me in return.

Sometimes I find a little bit of sweetness rattling around inside—a brief affair, a date or two, maybe an intellectual sparring partner that makes me buzzing and giddy. But mainly I find kindness that I’ve left myself that is supposed to encourage other people to leave something, too. I know that I’m worthy of the same kind of love and pleasure I desire from someone else. I also know that in the wash of pink and red and February days slipping by on the calendar is the notion that self-love is a year-round affair.

Athena Dixon is the author of essay collections The Incredible Shrinking Woman and The Loneliness Files and her work appears in publications such as Harper's Bazaar, Shenandoah, Grub Street, Narratively, and Lit Hub among others. She is a Consulting Editor for Fourth Genre and the Nonfiction/Hybrid Editor for Split/Lip Press.