Valentine’s Day is that day when you are expected to do something “special” for the “one” you love. The emotional communist in me starts thinking, “Nobody in your life should be that special.”

Why does love have to have a class structure, with romantic love as the ideal at the top and other kinds of love at the bottom? Shouldn’t we be loving everyone equally? Why don’t we have a day that celebrates true love in its purer, less selfish, less physical forms — a day to celebrate benevolence and compassion? Whatever happened to the concept of loving the one you’re with? Isn’t it nobler to love everybody all the time the best you can, rather than hoard up all of your love for that one “special” person, especially when half the time that special person doesn’t love you as much as you love them, or vice versa? I maintain that love that has to prove itself isn’t love at all; it’s an ego trip that has more to do with the person doing the giving than with actually loving the object of desire.

Valentine’s Day reeks of desperation, uncertainty, anticipation and despair. I think they should rename it Co-Dependent Hell Day. The kind of love that is celebrated on Valentine’s Day is conditional love — “I only love you as long as I can stick my penis in your vagina. That’s the deal. In return, you get this box of chocolates and bouquet of roses.” What the hell is that? That is almost as twisted and sick as the concept of marriage. “I will marry you as long as I get to stick my penis in your vagina. That’s the deal. In return, you get this ring and a piece of paper.”

True love is not about making deals, like a couple of lawyers under the covers. True love is antithetical to the very concept of Valentine’s Day, which is all about having unrealistic expectations of a “special” someone. Often these expectations are thought of by one or both partners as needs, but they aren’t really needs at all (who needs a negligee if you are truly turned on?) but rather delusions that need to be fed to some kind of monstrous, emotional artifice that the couple dreamed up together.

This Frankenstein, also known as the “we of us,” must constantly be patched up, re-stuffed and fed with fantasies lest it rear its ugly head to gobble both partners up and send them into the nothingness of an ego-void. Philosophers would say that being ejected into the nothingness of the ego-void is actually good for you, an opportunity for the veils to be stripped from your eyes so that you can be led onto the path of true love. The cornerstone of these philosophies is that you cannot love another unless you love yourself first, which is why it might be a good idea to send a Valentine to yourself on Valentine’s Day. Or some Valentines day gift baskets as an alternative.

The last thing most of us want is to hear any truth about the human condition; we prefer to project qualities of an ideal onto a person as if they were a movie screen. You see this all the time — examples are the battered woman who projects qualities of childlike innocence onto her abuser or the older man who projects qualities of intelligence and talent onto a younger woman just because she meets his ideal of beauty. Then we throw tantrums or get depressed or obsessed when the object of desire doesn’t follow the little script we set up for them. This state of mental illness is what our society calls love. Valentine’s Day reinforces the idea that love is blind, that we should have unrealistic or idealistic expectations of those we love and refuse to see them for who they actually are. It is the favorite holiday of the terminally bitter disappointed idealist, which is how most people describe themselves after some kind of romantic movie of theirs gets chewed up by reality.

In our society, many grave mental disturbances are defined by the phrase “It must be love.” If you have a desire to control someone else, it must be love. If you have the desire to change someone else for their own good, it must be love. If you have the desire to stay with someone at any cost, it must be love. If you are obsessed, it must be love. If you lust for someone, it must be love. These are symptoms of something, but it is not love. I don’t believe there is any truth to the term “crazy in love.” If you feel crazy, you probably just are crazy, and not in love at all. If you are “lovesick,” you are probably just sick, and not in love at all. Love doesn’t have symptoms. Love is nothing special, unless there is something wrong.

Credits: Donna Lypchuk