Valentine's Day... Ugh :(
Today is Valentine’s Day!
It’s the day when women prepare fancy romantic dinners, men joyfully buy roses and expensive chocolates, and lovers express their undying devotion to each other. It’s a day of uninhibited romantic ecstasy that no one wants to end and that everyone looks expectantly forward to the next one.
What? That hasn’t been your Valentine’s Day experience?!?
I don’t know who created Valentine’s Day or why, but, personally, I think Valentine’s Day has crushed more romantic dreams than any other day of the year. Like a lot of commercialized holidays, what we were promised never quite measures up. Somewhat surprisingly, too, these messages of what Valentine’s Day “should” be starts when we are young.
When I was in high school, there was a fundraiser at my school every Valentine’s Day. The group sold carnations and would deliver them for the purchaser, keeping his or her anonymity if requested.
Year after year I dreamed of getting a carnation from someone. But year after year, I was disappointed. As the other girls (and even boys) got carnations, I always went home empty-handed. I concluded that I must be “less than” everyone else who received a carnation: less important, less desirable, and less worthy of attention.
I didn’t know it at the time, but wanting someone else to buy me a flower was not entirely about finding romance. It was also about me wanting to look “good” to my friends and peers. But even more shocking to me now that I know the truth, what was underlying all of it was my own doubts about my lovability.
In other words, I was wanting proof that I was worthy of love by having someone else tell me or show me that I was. The reason I wanted that carnation so badly was because I didn’t value myself and thought that getting a carnation would make me feel that I was worth being loved.
Many years later, when I was in my 30’s, I started dating a man who finally fulfilled my Valentine’s Day dream. On our first Valentine’s Day together, he gave me flowers, balloons, and a stuffed bear for good measure. I felt so loved! Ah, this is how it is “supposed” to work, I thought.
Despite the significant gesture and despite feeling that my new boyfriend did love me, I still struggled with needing external validation. The gestures that I assumed would solve my feelings of inadequacy never fixed my problem— or, at least, not for long. And when I didn’t get these gestures from the outside world, I struggled with whether I was still worthy of love. My self-worth sat on a house of cards that could fall at any time when the outside world stopped validating my worthiness.
Over time, this feeling of being unlovable took its toll. I tired of needing someone else to tell me, show me, or convince me that I was worthy of love. But I had never been taught how to get past these difficult feelings, so it was a long journey, full of trials and many errors before I made significant progress in seeing myself as lovable.
Today I can still fall into the trap of viewing what others think or feel about me as evidence of my worthiness to be loved, but much less frequently than I used to. I spent a lot of time in self-reflection, discovering why I lacked a sense of worthiness. Knowing the roots of my own unworthiness allowed me to dig them up like a dangerous weed.
One of the things that was important to me realizing my own worthiness was to see that ALL of us are worthy of love. Yes, some of us may be more difficult to love consistently than others, but we are all WORTHY of love.
Do you feel worthy of love?
If not, today might be a good day to reflect on why that might be. Perhaps it’s time to sit quietly and ask yourself why. Maybe you will make faster progress by journaling about the question. If you have a connection to your Higher Power, it could help to ask Him to reveal why you are inherently worthy of love.
On this Valentine’s Day, I am grateful that I am learning to view myself as worth of love. I still enjoy receiving flowers and when it happens, I take in the gesture with love and gratitude. But even when I don’t receive flowers on Valentine’s Day (or any other day of the year), I can still feel my own worthiness and find the love I need by choosing to love myself.
My wish for you this Valentine’s Day is that you, too, can see that you are worth of love and that your worth doesn’t depend on what others say, do, or feel. Believe that you are lovable. Fake it ‘til you make it, if that’s what it takes, but take enough interest in yourself to explore and, eventually, convince yourself that you are fully worthy of love — today and every day.
