The 7 Emotional Stages Of Being Single On Valentine’s Day

Published on3rd February 2017 at 5.45am

**1. Fear. **The date is approaching. You don’t have a boyfriend. You didn’t have one last Valentine’s Day either. Have you failed at life? Are you destined to die alone? Should you freeze your eggs? Should you have stayed with your teenage boyfriend? Was he the one? He didn’t feel like he was the One. Would the One pluck his eyebrows and have another girlfriend on the go at the same time?

**2. Denial. **It’s just a normal day, right? There’s no need to freak out that seemingly everyone you know has found the One and you’re still right-swiping your way through Tinder tipsy on a Sunday night. We’re sure that there will be absolutely no mention of it at all. We’ll probably forget what day it is before we even have our lunch.

**3. Envy. **We want flowers delivered to work or waiting for us at home. We want to be taken out for a romantic dinner or surprise date. Why does she deserve it but we don’t? This is the ugliest part of our day. We’re sorry to anyone we come across.

**4. Annoyance. **No, we don’t want your pity – please stop half-heartedly suggesting group activities to try and make us feel better. Oh, and if another coupled up person feels the need to tell us that they can’t hang out because it’s Valentine’s Day, as if we didn’t already know, we cannot accept responsibility for our actions.

**5. Sadness. **Oh, we knew it would come to this. 8pm, lying on our sofa binge watching Sex and the City and comfort ‘eating’ red wine. We’ve never felt more like Bridget Jones than this moment.

**6. Smugness. **But then comes our eureka moment. Our twenties are THE time to be single. We’re totally free to do as we please and have fun – aren’t all of our coupled up friends saying they’d love to have tried dating apps, and that they’re living vicariously through us?

**7. Acceptance. **Because really, it’s just like every other day. (Where the societal pressure to get married, buy a house and have children is so soul-crushingly devastating, you think you might pass out from the strain – just kidding...)