Valentine’s sucks. Everyone knows it, but few can discuss it in any way that isn’t singed by resentment, grief, or naivety. Single people are either forced to see the “happy couples” and sulk upon their being alone, or to try in vain to have a romantic encounter, only for that to fail gloriously, forcing awkward avoidance of that person for the near future (make sure to leave an offering to the ghost of terrible Screws past, lest ye succumb to the same fate!). But the “happy couples” that single people imagine don’t really exist. Valentine’s Day, especially for young couples, represents a time of extreme stress where both people are invested in the notion that the holiday may provide a romantic environment to affirm their relationship and to assuage stressors from the rest of their lives. People’s relationship to Valentine’s is what Lauren Berlant may refer to as “cruelly optimistic” — they look to Valentine’s Day to provide them with some sense of either security, romance, or escape, which is exactly what Valentine’s prevents from happening. While we may not immediately and explicitly address this truth, it is extremely apparent considering the new music that comes out at this time of the year, as I’ll explore through MUNA’s new song “Dancing On The Wall” and Venturing’s “In the Dark.”
MUNA, a queer dance pop group, recently released “Dancing On The Wall” — the first single off their forthcoming album of the same name — a song about the cruelly optimistic relationship between the singer and her lover, who she refers to as the “wall.” The relationship in “Dancing On The Wall” is fraught; the singer refers to her partner as perpetually “so last minute,” “wast[ing] my time,” and as letting “sweet things … go bad.” Their lover doesn’t consider their relationship a priority and doesn’t put effort into making it work. They callously disregard the narrator’s time, and yet the narrator returns to her, again and again. The singer continuously expects that “this time, [they’ll] get through,” meaning both getting through the barriers that her lover is setting up and getting their lover to actually see her. Despite the singer constantly being disappointed by her lover, she is continuously euphoric. The relationship allows her to constantly imbue the other with all of her hopes — intimacy, care, and romance — and though she “end[s] up with a bruise as a consequence,” it is because she “know[s] how to hurt [her]self on you” and continuously returns to do so. It is a relationship that rings familiar for a lot of people, especially young people, and the fact that MUNA released it on Feb. 10, the Tuesday before Valentine’s, can be no coincidence.
The ecstasy of a cruel, optimistic relationship is constantly convincing yourself that you’ll achieve meaningful change. Most of our culture’s association of Valentine’s Day and relationships, broadly, as objects to be sought after, is based on our view that relationships are the cause of positive transformations within the self. We believe that if we just get into a relationship with that smart, loving, magnetic person, they will pull us out of whatever depression or lack we currently suffer. Living in a patriarchal society, the most obvious state of this theme is involved in relationships where women are made to be caretakers of their partners, where the partner believes that their girlfriend serves the purpose of fulfilling a lack of maternal or self-care. The naivety here is apparent — not all relationships affect positive change and many generate harm — but it is also extractive in that it assumes that your partner exists in some way for you to achieve some fulfillment that they did not sign up for (the “I’m not your mother” of it all).
The detriments of an overinvestment in the positive transformational quality of one’s real or imagined relationship with a partner create the underlying narrative of Venturing’s new song “In the Dark.” Jane Remover released their first album under their indie rock project, Venturing, last Valentine’s Day and released “In the Dark” this Friday, a year later. Their music largely centers around themes of yearning, self-actualization and fame, and the disconnect between fantasy and reality. “In the Dark” centers on the narrator’s vision of their relationship with a would-be partner, which fulfills their sense of self through intimacy with another. Their yearning for this partner is thwarted both through their own rise to fame — “So don’t get jealous watchin’ me on the screen, wherever you are” — and their lover’s new relationship. The loss of their relationship and all of its symbolic meaning causes the narrator to continually relive and reminisce about their relationship, singing the songs “we s[u]ng, you and me, playin’ my guitar” and returning to their continual refrain “I still dream of us.” When your investment in a partner is defined by the immense faith you place in them as a transformative force in your life, the loss of the real or imagined relationship means, in many ways, a loss of your sense of self.
To make it through Valentine’s, it is necessary to take a step back from the holiday and the investments we make into it as a transformational object. In a culture that fashions being in a relationship as necessary to complete personhood, it is difficult to theorize self-sufficiency both for the single person as within the couple structure, but it is not impossible. Relationships have the capacity to be fulfilling, and love has the capacity to be transformative, but our culture’s complete investment in Valentine’s Day as a day of immense, immediate change through a lover is cruel, and we must reframe the role of relationships. Relationships won’t always make you happy, having a date for Valentine’s won’t alleviate the stress of your five-credit semester, and sex won’t make your readings go by any faster. Until society can divest itself of these cultural meanings, Valentine’s Day will remain damned to inadequacy.
