5 Ways to Have a Completely Miserable Valentine’s Day: Part 2, Couple’s Edition

1. The most important thing about Valentine’s Day is the hints.  Each February the average woman drops approximately 2,944 hints about what she wants.  Of these hints men pick up about 4.  On the other hand, men will drop 0 hints, and of these women will pick up about 3,997. Any hint that goes unfulfilled is a chance for a miserable February 14^th. 

2. Establish the biggest expectations you can come up with, then insist that you have no expectations.  Then when your lover decides they want to stay in, watch Bond movies, eat frozen Snickers, and go to bed early, you can be really really upset.  But you said you had no expectations! Anything for Valentine’s Day is great! You’ll have to hold your hurt feeling inside where they can fester and make you completely miserable.

3. Talk about your plans until your single friends destroy you.  Whenever you are around your unattached friends, make frequent mention of all the lovely and romantic things you’re going to do with your SO. While your poor lonely friends might not physically harm you, the tension and hatred will make everyone in the room sufficiently miserable.

4. Comparison is key.  Use other couples as the standard to which you hold your own relationship.  Even if you’re both introverted agoraphobes, everyone else is going out to candlelight dinners under the Eifel Tower with violins and chocolates and a new car with a puppy inside!  You must match and escalate!  CANDLELIGHT DINNER UNDERWATER!!!  Chances are really good that you don’t have the imagination or the capital to achieve the evenings other couples are capable of, but comparisons will cement your misery.

5. Breakup.  Save up all of your grievances and hurt feelings until Valentine’s Day night.  Go to the most public place you can find and have an increasingly tearful and heatedly angry argument.  Be sure to end in screams and slammed car doors.  Next, find your most single friend (the one who’s been single for the most consecutive Valentine’s Days) and cry on their shoulder while you help yourself to their barbecue Pringles and Triple Brownie Carmel Hazelnut Ice Cream. If you’re lucky, you’ll end Valentine’s Day scrubbing chocolate sauce out of your shirt while holding an ice pack to your broken nose.