How to Spend Valentine's day alone

The societal and commercial idea of Valentine's day is to spend it with your partner, to buy flowers, chocolate, and other romantic gifts and to give your partner extra special attention on this day. But what if you're single? It can make you feel sad, lonely, and just mainly uncomfortable to be out that day while seeing all the lovey-dovey couples doing their thing. It can feel almost as though being single is an undesirable thing.

HOWEVER, I think being single on valentine's day can be a wonderful experience. You can still choose for it to be a day to give extra special attention....to yourself. In the busyness of our lives, how often do you truly take a day just to pamper and treat yourself? From my own experience, I can tell you that it doesn't happen too often. I'm busy with work, busy with University, trying to maintain my social life, making sure my house doesn't become a cluttered mess... And sure, sometimes I'll do a face-mask, or take my time cooking myself a nice meal. But truly taking a whole day just to think of myself, yeah that doesn't happen too often.

So consider valentine's day to be the day where you just take care of yourself all day and treat yourself as you'd treat a partner (which is of course the foundation to finding love darling!)

So let's go through some potential v-day plans:

1. Have dinner with some friends

Do you feel like you just really don't want to be alone on this day, then don't be! Get your fellow single friends and plan a nice dinner. Whether you go out and make reservations or you stay in and make a home-cooked meal. Wanting company is also a way to take care of yourself, to listen to your needs and say actually...I want to spend time with someone.

2. Go to a singles mixer

One hundred percent you're not the only one who feels this way about valentine's day. Your city is sure to have at least one singles event going on. This is an opportunity to get out of the house, dress up, feel yourself, and meet some new people. Go and experience something new, it's always exciting to be in a space where no one knows who you are. You can be fully yourself, and maybe you'll get a new love interest out of it and can spend the next valentine's day together ;)

3. Explore your city

Now let's get to things you can do on your own. If you're new in your city, or if you've been there for years, surely there's some corners you're not familiar with. So make a day out of it! Get dressed up and just get lost in a new town, be a little bit of a tourist. And say you feel you know your city well...you can always travel somewhere close by that you're not familiar with and walk around aimlessly until you're ready to call it a day.

4. Splurge on yourself

If you're anything like me, you enjoy the occasional retail therapy (sometimes not so occasional). But if you've been saving up, maybe this is the chance to splurge a little, and just go out into town and spend the day shopping, get a nice fancy drink somewhere. Make yourself feel like you're in that transformation montage every early 2000s rom-com has. You are the main character, and you deserve to feel that way!

5. Take yourself out to dinner

I will say, this is for the more advanced singles out there. I know going out to dinner alone can feel intimidating, and if you're not ready for that yet...SKIP THIS ONE. But if you've done it before, or feel that you'll be comfortable in this setting, go for it. Having dinner alone feels sooo good, it truly feels like you're taking care of yourself (which you are). But I'll repeat, it can definitely be intimidating if you're not there yet, so check-in with yourself and make sure you're going to feel good if you decide to do this. And if dinner is too scary, you can take yourself out to breakfast or lunch, there's way less pressure then, I don't know why, maybe because the sun is out, but that's how it is. Start small, and then you can always build it up.

6. Have a lazy, stay-in evening

If you'd rather just spend the day at home, make it special. Spend time cooking your favourite meal, and really take time for all the aspects, put on your favourite playlist and get lost in the process of cooking. Pick out your favourite movie (beforehand if you're indecisive as me), grab your go-to drink of choice and enjoy the work you've put into your meal. You can pick up a hobby you've forgotten about or one you've always wanted to try. Do a face-mask, again, have your main character moment.

You can also mix-and-match these ideas, the day is 24 hours long!

There's so much pressure for valentine's day, but take advantage of all the sales companies offer, splurge on yourself. And the next day most of the valentine's chocolates will be on sale, so you can look forward to that.

Valentine's day is about love (and kind of about capitalism but let's ignore that for now), and sharing that love with someone, and who better to share that with than with yourself. You should be the most important person in your life, so take some time to take care of yourself. Whether you go out, get a massage, stay in...just make sure you show some love to you. You could even write yourself a love letter (aaww, cute).

And if you really dislike valentine's day...well, you can do any of these things cause it doesn't have to be any special day for you to take care of yourself, and just...don't mind all the hearts everywhere.

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Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this blog post are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official views of Phryme.