Being Single on Valentine’s Day and Trying to Believe in Love, Again

This year, I will be single on Valentine’s Day. Over time, my heart has learned to whisper its longing for love.

Not too loud — desperation is unforgivable.

Not too open — vulnerability is risky in a world that values polish and convenience.

Not too slow, either, because life does not slow down for childless single women in their thirties who still want love and a family.

I move through my days with a smile I’ve accepted as second nature. It hides a sadness no one sees, while the melody my heart sings has slipped slightly off key, teetering between hope and cynicism.

The wanting used to be louder. It reached for the stars as I looked up into the sky when I was a music photographer in Asheville, North Carolina. Self-worth and love walked hand in hand. It filled rooms and parties, hoping to dance with beautiful boys who might notice me from across the room. It was the warmth of perfume caught up close, the curl of lips after a glance from a well-dressed stranger. It took up space — unafraid of closeness, unafraid of becoming real.

Back then, wanting sounded like the click of my heels ready to pave nighttime streets gold, the flip of my hair as I spun through rooms dancing to funk, the shutter of my camera capturing beauty in chaos. Love lived in shared laughter and cheap beer outside bars. Connection felt like something that could appear as easily as the next song. One glance could change everything — sparks, possibilities, futures beginning in chance encounters, back when the world felt like it belonged to the young.

Now, after the quiet grief of timelines unrealized, my longing for love has dulled, like a flint that refuses to spark. This longing lingers in the background of ordinary moments. It’s lie a song I’d rather forget or a love letter unsent, crumpled and abandoned in the back of a desk drawer. Lately, self-worth feels as slippery as the ice on the ground rather than something to count on.

Sometimes, my longing for love, makes me think of how brief life really is. Life isn’t slowing down, and I won’t be young forever. I watch people my age pushing strollers as I wait for the bus alone. I go home to an empty apartment that has begun to feel too claustrophobic to inhabit. Sunshine spills through the windows, bright and tender, as if trying to cheer me up as I’m frostbitten from melancholy and the cold. Orange carnations sit in a vase on my kitchen table, looking at me the way I used to look into crowds hoping to be noticed.

There are times I can’t shake the faint fear of having arrived at something slightly too late. Off schedule. I wonder, at night as I stare at my bedroom ceiling, my skin crawling with anxiety and grief, whether I am lovable beyond performance, beyond striving, beyond perfection. Beyond one night.

Being Single on Valentine’s Day: On Longing, Love, and the Space Between

I live a life I love, although imperfect and financially precarious. But if I’m honest, I worry I’m becoming indifferent to love. Not because I don’t care, but because I have cared deeply, again and again, only to end up empty. I’ve placed my heart in hands that could not hold it, and I’ve been handed back pieces. I’ve learned how to protect myself from the disappointment that follows when nothing changes and when people walk away like you never mattered. I live with the fear of being replaceable, taken for granted, “perfect” until the shinier thing comes along. Being single on Valentine’s Day makes this painfully clear.

Through the pain and heartbreak, I sometimes find myself keeping quiet, keeping to myself, keeping the peace, and even making myself into an image that is more palatable, what people need in the moment. Sometimes it feels easier to be silent than to offer the truth, or the messiness and contradictions of my heart, afraid it might be too much.

There’s an ache in my chest I’ve learned to endure. Cold nights are spent tossing in bed, wondering if I missed my turn at love at almost thirty-one. Being single on Valentine’s Day has a way of stirring questions about worth. Without being chosen, who am I?

Valentine’s Day, Desire, and the Conditional Nature of Self-Love

Often times I wonder if what I’ve been calling self-love isn’t as unconditional as I thought. Being single on Valentine’s Day makes this truth more clear. Throughout my life, self-love was something I could access only when I was being noticed, wanted, chosen. My sense of self-love was easily shaken when rejected, ignored, or with unexpected negative outcomes. I find myself tying my worth to desire. Desire mirrors me back to myself; someone else’s attention confirms that I am still worthy of tenderness.

When that attention disappears, as it often does, self-love becomes conditional. It flickers. It hesitates. It asks for proof. It seems to only exist with achievement, hustle, and praise. Without being chosen, kindness toward myself starts to feel undeserved — like something I haven’t earned yet. I become harder on myself in the absence of affirmation, more willing to punish than protect.

I’m learning the quiet danger of tying your worth to desire. Not because wanting to be loved is wrong, but because I’ve learned that it outsources your self-regard. You end up believing you are most valuable when you are noticed and through someone else’s wanting, and less so when you’re alone with yourself.

I’m also learning how fragile self-love becomes when it depends on being seen and the attention of other’s. How easily it turns into something transactional — given freely when I’m desired, withheld when I’m not. And how much gentleness it takes to interrupt that pattern. To offer myself care even when no one is choosing me. Especially then.

This fragility didn’t form in isolation. It didn’t arrive because I failed at loving myself correctly. It was shaped slowly, through what was rewarded, what was ignored, what was withheld. Through learning, over time, that love often came with conditions, and that being wanted felt safer than simply being.

Somewhere along the way, love becomes something we shield ourselves from, even to the point of self-betrayal and becoming nonchalant about it.

Desire, too loud.

Hope, too naïve.

Vulnerability, too much work.

Modern Love and the Pressure to Be Easy

Women are raised to be good, agreeable, and polite, even as we move through a world that still consumes us as objects. Over time, goodness hardens into a mask. We become fluent in being easy — low maintenance, emotionally available but not emotional, healed but never vulnerable. We arrive polished and self-contained, careful not to ask for too much, careful not to be too much.

We learn how to make ourselves palatable. Streamlined. Efficient. Presentable. Something that looks good online and feels increasingly empty in private. Asked to be everything, while accepting almost nothing in return. The whole package but satisfied with crumbs at the same time.

There is a quiet violence in that expectation. In being told, subtly or outright, that love should arrive without friction, without mess, without the full weight of another human being. That being perfect is the key to being loved back. That if love hasn’t arrived yet, the fault must lie in how loudly we wanted it, how awkwardly we reached, how human we allowed ourselves to be.

So we soften our edges. We polish the packaging. We strip ourselves of realness in favor of being chosen. Our worth becomes measured in altars and white picket fences — in being chosen, as if we are nothing without someone else’s approval.

We say less than we feel. We present a version of ourselves that feels easier to love. Not because it’s truer, but because compromise feels better than being alone. Because wanting openly has taught us how exposing disappointment can feel. Because caring deeply, without guarantees, has consequences. Vulnerability becomes a liability. Strength becomes armor.

I haven’t stopped believing in love. I’ve just learned how carefully it needs to be held and that my heart shouldn’t come without costs. I’m learning to rely less on sparks because not everything meant to last arrives loudly, or all at once. Some things take their time. Some things change shape.

Valentine’s Day comes and goes, as it always does. The longing doesn’t disappear, but it doesn’t need to. It settles. It waits. Despite its presence, despite its weight, I continue to make room — staying open in the ways I can be, believing that love, the real kind, is still worth holding space for.