It's not that I begrudge anyone their overpriced roses, but I'd rather celebrate the freedom to choose to be partnered or alone, and equally fulfilled either way. By Sarah Catherall
I used to approach Valentine’s Day with the excitement of an impending birthday or Christmas. One February 14, aged 13, I left a poem in a milk bottle for a milk boy crush and, for the next three decades, I swooned over males, hoping one would gift me a card or roses on the special day. As a Gen X woman, I'd grown up understanding that I wasn’t enough without a man to chase, to date, to form a relationship with, and eventually marry. A man to complete me.
Even today, married or partnered couples are regarded like a set of salt and pepper shakers: you can’t have one without the other. We idolise celebrity couples, clicking on anything that shows a glimpse of their seemingly perfect lives. What are Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce up to? We’d be less interested in Meghan Markle if we weren’t also captivated by her seemingly complicated relationship with Harry, who wouldn't be so interesting himself were he not with the American actress.
These couples might look like they’re besotted, but it’s apt to be cynical. Romantic love was invented about the same time as the dishwasher, and the former has been much overhyped. There's not one person who will tick every box as your lover, partner, friend, and soulmate, even though the dating apps suggest that you can find a six foot two Aries with a holiday house in Queenstown, who has an interest in somatic dance and classic film nights just like you do.
We search and search for that missing piece, but Whitney was right: you have to love yourself before you’re capable of loving someone else, and even then the self love might be the more reliable.
After my marriage ended at the end of my 30s I spent several years in the dating wilderness, and it was only when I put myself on a man ban, refusing to go near any male, that my partner came into my life.
Divorce also taught me that some relationships aren’t supposed to be forever, and you can enjoy a chapter with a person and then call it quits.
There’s nothing more liberating than seeing single people loving themselves, or choosing conscious singledom over the outdated, flawed idea we Gen X women (and the Boomers before us) were sold that you aren’t enough without an intimate partner.
The spinster stigma
Growing up, I understood my great aunt Lella was a "spinster" who'd missed her chance to marry. She died when I was young but I gleaned that her life as an unmarried woman was hardly glamorous. Born in 1917, her brothers married and moved out of the family home, but unable to support herself, as single women once were, Lella stayed living with her parents, my great-grandparents. When she was about 40, her mother died and Lella juggled a secretarial job with cooking, cleaning and caring for her father until he died a decade later.
The only perk was she inherited the family home, and was always a much-loved aunt to my mother and her six siblings.
Labelling single women as spinsters or “old maids’’ and pitying them denies their contribution to history. A vast number of single women have been overachievers, not dragged down by a mate or by children. Jane Austen was single when she wrote her novels, as was Harper Lee. Queen Elizabeth 1 and Florence Nightingale never married, and 90-year-old Jane Goodall is still unmarried, having dedicated her life to saving chimps.
Singles Awareness Day falls the day after Valentine’s Day, shunning the idea that you’re a failure if you’re not partnered up. The event was invented in 2001 – and copyrighted in 2015 – by an American high school student, Dustin Barns, who sold chocolates and candles at his school on February 15 to support those who weren’t in relationships.
But in 2025 it seems like single people might not need that level of support.
Empowered to be single
Singles are big business: 46 per cent of Americans over the age of 18 are single, either widowed, divorced, or never married. Here, about 39 per cent of us, or more than a third of adults over 18, are unpartnered, according to Statistics New Zealand.
Two of my daughters are in happy, healthy relationships but a lot of their friends in their early and mid-twenties are consciously single, which fills me with hope that Gen Z women seem empowered to be on their own.
On Valentine’s Day, my partner and I will probably exchange cards, but it’s more meaningful to show appreciation and respect to each other every day of the year.
My advice on this overly commercialised day is to give yourself a gift and silence the dating apps if you’re exhausted by the endless scrolling and ghosting, and the ups and downs of trying to find your Mr/Ms Right. Buy yourself some flowers – actually, don’t because they’re overpriced today. Take yourself out: where do you want to go? What do you want to do? Or gather your single friends together and have fun.
Celebrate the fact you don’t have to check in with another person. The only person you need to fulfill on Valentine’s Day is yourself.
Sarah Catherall lives in Wellington and is the author of How to Break Up Well: Surviving and Thriving After Separation.
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