Solo Valentine’s Day Plans: Reading Romance Books and Falling Apart Gently
Valentine’s Day is a scam. A pink, heart-shaped, capitalist fever dream designed to make you feel personally attacked by couples holding hands in public and restaurants offering “romantic prix-fixe menus” that taste suspiciously like disappointment. And yet — and yet — there I am every February, lighting a candle, opening a romance novel, and willingly surrendering my emotional stability to fictional people who will never text me back. Because if love is an illusion, then romance books are the best kind of delusion . These books didn’t just give me butterflies — they released entire colonies of them. They made my stomach flip, my standards rise, and my tolerance for emotionally unavailable men in real life drop dramatically. They reminded me that love can be awkward, sarcastic, inconvenient, messy, tender, and devastatingly hopeful all at once. That longing is an art form. That yearning is a lifestyle. That sometimes believing in love again starts with a girl, a boy, and a momen...
