Happy Valentine’s Day to Someone, Anyone, Everyone
Part one
During the first and second years after the breakdown of my marriage, I cried at pretty much every holiday that came around. Christmas was the worst if only because it had been the key holiday of my childhood, the one where all family members were expected to come home, take part in tree decoration, pray for snow, choose wrapping papers, hide our gifts from one another, and enjoy the never-perfect but pretty damn good turkey dinner. Many of my happiest childhood memories were, and still are, of snowy holiday seasons lit by fairy lights.
But when the third post-marriage Christmas rolled around, a funny thought occurred to me while out shopping for my drastically reduced experience of the once-loved holiday. I would buy myself a romantic gift. I chose a pair of silver studded earrings with a tiny opal (my birthstone) encased in the silver. I wrapped the tiny box in shiny silver and blue paper, chose a card with a snow scene and a sprinkling of glitter, and wrote myself a message. Dear Amy, Merry Christmas, sweetheart. With love, Amy.
Yes, it was a tiny victory, a fleeting liberation drawn from a silly thing - a Christmas gift. But it belonged to a larger piece of learning, our life project we might say – to understand the self as a free agent whether in a relationship or not. To stop hoping that others might know our desires (whether these small ‘gifty’ ones or the big important ones) as, or better than we know them ourselves. To release our loved ones from unfair expectations, and be released in turn. To define one’s separate purpose and direction in life, and find the meaning of love alongside those projects.
Did I shed the pain and sadness of relationship breakdown? No. I still grieve and probably always will. There is much that I miss, but much I do not miss at all. And as often as not, I rue the time it took to realize that breaking away was the best thing that could happen to me, even if it was hard and scary too.
Like Christmas, Valentine’s Day presents an annual reminder of my single state. Unlike the now-annual romantic Christmas gift, I rarely feel the need to send myself a Valentine's card or love-token. Of course, I am pleased for my friends in couples. It would be churlish not to wish for the happiness of others, even if this particular happiness is one I no longer experience. And it would be dishonest to pretend that one chosen state (whether single or partnered) is preferable to the other.
The impossible truth is that each state delivers something the other state cannot. When I was married, I regularly longed to be free. To be responsible for myself and please myself without reference to a partner. Now that I am free, I sometimes long to be loved romantically and to love in return. More often, I long for reliable companionship. But the truth is, I do not experience these longings often. What the years have taught me is that alone, I am more myself. The question of happiness-in-love is the wrong one for me. There are other questions. Am I learning to know myself better and chart my course? Am I brave or afraid? How do I handle those? How am I with others? Of course, such questions occur in or out of relationships, but when you are alone, they are perhaps more glaring. There is no one to shield you from them; no one to answer them but oneself.
Yes, the single person’s questions include those concerning love. Did I ever truly love and was I ever truly loved? What does that even mean? And why do humans so easily leap to that question before wondering how well we love ourselves, our friends, and strangers? Can I find honest ways (that do not diminish the people involved) to love others and receive love too? How well might friends know and understand one another? And alongside this, which people have been more fun in my life - friends or lovers? When did I laugh the most? Because fun and laughter matter.
These questions are better for me because friendship is essential to single people. We may read it too heavily at times, but we never see it as less meaningful than couple love. As for all these concerns, I know I share them with most other people, single or otherwise. I’m not special. And I am as messy and mistaken a person as can be. I will never find all the answers. But the questions are good.
So, this Valentine’s Day, greetings to friends and readers, single or not. Love is found in surprising forms and places. And just now, the world needs love to be as expansive and inclusive as we can manage.
Happy Valentine’s Day to Someone. Anyone. Everyone.
Part two
This is a curation.
And a gentle reminder that single women, in particular, sometimes feel misunderstood. A few years ago The Guardian published a piece on life as single women across the generations, with contributions from writers from their 20s to their 90s.
I am sharing the last three writers of this piece - as they are the older ones, like me. I loved their contributions to the article - not only because they are all terrific writers but because they identify so well the meanings, challenges, joys, and attractions of single life, as well as the fact that 'single' can have many gradations. I have certainly known a few of those gradations over the years.
I am sometimes made aware that others (most often men of my generation) assume I must be unhappy to be single. To which, I might reply cheekily, you don’t know what you’re missing!
Life ain’t perfect and yes, sometimes I feel the weight and sadness of my choices, as well as circumstances that arrived with or without choice. Such times do come, and then they go. And I find myself. Again and again. Different each time.
See below for extended contributions to The Guardian piece from AL Kennedy, VG Lee, and Joan Bakewell:
AL Kennedy, in her 60s:
"Sometimes a long-running TV series will broadcast a rogue episode. We’ll only recognise a solitary character and they’ll be surrounded by strangers and out of context. On the one hand, this is a chance to learn a lot about that person. On the other, more worried, hand, this isn’t what we’re used to and we hope things become more normal again very soon.
“For those of you who are in couples, throuples, communes, human centipedes – I don’t judge – single people are life’s rogue episodes. Turn up regularly with no partner, with not even a hint of someone who shares your tears and your Netflix password, and you’ll find no one really knows what to do with you. You’re their worst possible future – what would happen if everyone died, or ran away. You’re uncanny.
“And where do you fit on dinner tables? And you aren’t quite properly insulated, socially speaking, so do you need more attention than usual, or less? And if nobody knows you intimately, who explains you, verifies you? (For some reason that does seem to be required.) And if you’ve been single a very long time – which could mean anything over 12 hours – then what exactly must be wrong with you? Are you sexually weird, traumatically weird, extremely weird? Are you wanted by Interpol, living a double life? Do you sleep in a grubby wedding dress? Are you going to ransack the bathroom for razor blades and pills? Or husbands? Wives?
“No. Just stop. Leave the single folk alone… Maybe their days are rogue episodes, full of coincidence and friendships, adventures, wide circles of influence and support. Or maybe they only look single and are Something Else. They love and are loved, but live in different houses, different countries. Maybe they’re baffled by your round-robin email newsletters and family Christmas cards.
“I’m the only daughter of an only daughter, who raised me alone. Writing is hideously time-consuming and tough on heterosexual women’s relationships. Whisper “writer” on a date and your opposite number will dive through a bathroom window faster than you can yell “chlamydia”. Either that, or he’ll want to be written about and you’d better hope that window won’t hurt your head as you merrily leap from the cistern towards freedom.
“I was single for decades. That’s decades of confessions, complaints and propositions from the non-single. Have you seen some relationships … ? I was meant to want that when I had coincidence and friendships, adventures, wide circles and so forth? My health meant I have no children and that was sore – very – for a while, but other people’s kids need available honorary relatives, godparents, extras. That’s me.
“Solitaries are unmodified by intimate compromise. So do they become weird? I’m something else, have been for years. That’s not weird, that’s bespoke. Unclassifiable love is still love. Probably everything worthwhile a human can do is an expression of love. I needed solitary decades to reach any understanding of what that requires from me.
“We’ll probably all reach moments when we’re all we’ve got, alone. If solitude isn’t fearful, it helps us see reality, who we are, and really see others. When we’re in company being useful, happy, kind, ourselves – we can stay. If not, we can go. I love that.
“So leave the single folk alone. They may not need fixing. Let them sit quietly in public, if they want, pausing in their adventure. They may be having the time of their lives.”
VG Lee, 70s:
"I married at 19, and left the relationship when I was in my mid-30s. Almost overnight, my family and the few friends I had took a step away from me. I think they hoped that a few weeks renting a shabby one-bedroom flat in London would bring me rushing back to my hard-working husband and comfortable home in leafy Hertfordshire.
“But from the very first day of my new life – disoriented, a little fearful – I also felt relief. I remember buying a bright-blue blind from Habitat and a duvet set; blue again, patterned with white snowflakes. There was nobody to insist on a joint decision before purchase, to query my choice of colour or ask, “Are snowflakes really us?”
“No. They were really me.
“I believe that marriage is still seen as a mark of success; two people have found each other attractive and lovable enough to commit, in principle, till death do them part. Fine, but that view can feel like a negative judgment on those who choose or are forced through circumstance to live alone.
“In the past, when I enjoyed brief affairs, I felt my coupled friends silently urging me on, as if I was a racehorse galloping towards the finish line. Will she get there? Well, no she won’t. My heart was never involved. And perhaps that lies at the root of being a committed long-term single woman. I love many things, but I love and value myself more.
“Recently I attended a wedding. The bride and groom were patently in love; kissing, touching. I threw confetti, toasted the happy couple as they cut the cake, all the time thinking about my own wedding – a far smaller affair, more than 50 years earlier. On that day, I felt beautiful and special. I’ve never regretted marrying, only the length of time it took me to find the courage to break out on my own. Had I stayed, there would have been little personal space outside those joint decisions, for me to find my way to becoming a writer, to finding fulfilment in a tiny house near the sea. Best of all, I have friends; they are the glue that holds my world together.
“Am I happy? Of course, there are cold winter mornings when I wish that someone would bring me a mug of tea in bed or change the lightbulb in the kitchen, but that’s nowhere near enough to make me relinquish my hard-won freedom. To quote the Moomin character Snufkin: my life is “one part expectation, two parts sadness, and for the rest just the great delight of walking alone and liking it”.
Joan Bakewell, 90s:
"I have enjoyed living on my own for 20 years now; years in which I have come increasingly to cherish the single state. For me, it has many blessings.
“I am now in my 90s, with the experience of two marriages behind me, so I am not looking to raise children, create a family home, embark on an extended network that includes schools, surgeries, neighbourhood families, sporting events and holidays planned to suit everyone. I have done all that and it’s behind me now, leaving good memories, but it’s not something I want to revisit. So my horizons are narrower. I am responsible only for myself and can indulge my own tastes to the full.
“Ah yes, but what about the loneliness, the isolation, the late-night tears into the pillow, the watching a sunset without sharing it, what then? Yes, there are bouts of such moments in every life, shared or not. Life is a pretty inexplicable enterprise, after all, and if you’re in search of certainties, then head for the nearest church or mosque and ask for comfort there. If, like me, your life is full of doubt and confusion, then you share the human condition as most people know it."
With thanks to these lovely women for their writing, and affection for all my friends, especially the women, on this Valentine’s Day.
The Worst Valentine's Day Rises on a Loveless Union.
My friend, back then, from over here, when I heard an echo of your union's divorce, I felt loss, too. When this happens to a couple of friends, it is like splitting one personality into two, the two that were always there but augmented by each other. I mourned your renting apart into two, each adrift separately. It recapitulated the ache when you two left here to return to England. Happily for me, each of you seems happy, though you remain, and Ricardo feels remote to me. This happens.
You'll remember back then, when you were still here, you heard of my divorce, replaced by a better version of me to her, the luckier one. What evaporation of identity. What a dark time. Counseled that it would be rich in self-discovery, I'm not sure it was. The surprise was that I lucked into meeting up with a friend, Susan, and it has now been a partnership for 38 years. I was luckier than my former partner, who eventually left my successor, but I think she is happy, and that is good. Irony on irony. For us all, it worked out.
I hold that loving friendship is a gift from somewhere; it belongs to neither party. It need not be worked on, better if not given human fallibility; it only needs to be accepted, and, as love for oneself is barely possible for many, acceptance of the gift of love tends to be nearly impossible, but I hold it is with patience. If the gift is put down, it withers. Friendship needs belief by both. Friendship needn't be tied down; it's not an animal but needs belief. Belief is ritual and labor. Love requires faith of a sort, and maybe that's a trick of personality. Friendship can be easy or tough, but it is freely given from somewhere, and it is enjoyable if it is appreciated.
Thanks, that love is tolerable. There is the sacrifice of self-identity; self, that ill-defined attribute of living, lost in isolation, found in being with others. I am mostly myself, the way she sees me after three decades, and luckily, she still likes who she sees in me. That makes me happy.
For the fortunate, life is dotted with friends, offering the hope to find ourselves in them. You are a good writer; your art offers the willing reader to find themself in its place on your page. I find your writing warming and friendly, even if shocking at times; it harkens from our meeting 49 years ago, working together, and becoming friends. Writing is a medium, and it's a way of visiting with a friend (or a stranger) and being close tolerably at a distance. What respect I have for you, Amy. You, your son, your little dog, landscapes, photographs, and journalism. Our friendship is a little decoration in life.