Valentine’s Day is one of those holidays that manages to be wildly polarizing. Some people circle it on the calendar with hearts and anticipation, while others would happily fast-forward from February 13th straight to the 15th without so much as a glance at a pink card aisle (used to be me!). Few days stir up as many opinions, eye rolls, expectations, and emotions—all wrapped in red cellophane.
For the people who hate Valentine’s Day, the reasons are usually layered. It can feel commercialized, performative, or painfully loud about something that feels tender and private. It can highlight loneliness, loss, or relationships that didn’t turn out the way they were supposed to. It can remind you of love that you had – and lost. Sometimes it just feels exhausting to be told—by ads, social media, and store displays—what love should look like and how it should be celebrated.
And then there are the people who love it. Not because of the chocolate or the flowers (though those don’t hurt), but because it’s an excuse to pause. To be intentional. To say “I choose you” out loud in a world that moves too fast. For them, Valentine’s Day isn’t pressure—it’s permission. It’s the day you can shout to the rooftops how loved and seen they make you feel.
The truth is, both sides make sense.
Love is complicated. It’s joyful and messy, exhilarating and fragile. Some of us have loved deeply and lost. Some of us waited a long time to find the kind of love that feels safe. Some of us are still learning how to let ourselves be loved at all. Of course a holiday built entirely around love is going to hit differently depending on where you stand.
But here’s where the conundrum softens.
Valentine’s Day doesn’t actually belong to restaurants, greeting card companies, or curated Instagram posts. At its core, it belongs to love itself—the real, lived-in kind. The love that shows up on ordinary Tuesdays. The love that knows your quirks and stays anyway. The love that holds your hand through grief, growth, and grocery store errands. The love that brings you home yet another plant when you didn’t need one just because it makes you smile.
Being in love—real love—isn’t about grand gestures once a year. It’s about choosing each other in small, steady ways. It’s about laughter in the kitchen, quiet understanding, and feeling seen without needing to explain yourself. It’s about sitting in the bed watching TV because the chairs in the living room hurt your back. When you’re in that kind of love, Valentine’s Day becomes less of a performance and more of a gentle nod. A reminder.
And maybe that’s the shift worth making.
Instead of asking whether Valentine’s Day is worth celebrating, maybe the better question is whether love is worth acknowledging. Whether we can let the day be soft instead of loud. Honest instead of perfect. Whether we can hold space for both the joy of being in love and the ache of having loved before.
You don’t have to love Valentine’s Day to be in love. And you don’t have to hate it to take it lightly. But if you are in love—deeply, imperfectly, beautifully—there’s something quietly lovely about a day that says, “This matters.”
Not because a calendar told us so.
But because love always has.
Blessings Y’all – Amy
