INVOLUNTARY COMMITMENT

Single or overbooked, do Valentine's Day your own way

I’m a straight woman who recently had a bad breakup with a guy. Given that I thought I was moving toward my future, I know I’m not ready to date again. Actually I feel pretty good about that decision. Still, I’d really like to do something this Valentine’s to celebrate. I have good friends, but “Galentine” notions feel very cliché. Can I celebrate self-love? How does one begin a romance with themselves?

I’m a bad millennial. I hate the concept of self-love. Or rather, I hate the valorization of individualism that comes with it. Building a future with someone can be so beautiful and life affirming. Self-love feels like a consolation prize for the single. You don’t have a partner? Here, have some self-love as a little treat. This kind of messaging at the single, particularly women, to aggressively celebrate their singleness through Galentine’s Day can feel a bit condescending. I love Amy Poehler, but I cannot condone Galentine’s Day.

All that said, I’ve softened my stance on self-love and while I do think that there is way too much hype around Valentine’s Day, in truth I’m kind of a fan.

I’m going to suggest that you think of Valentine’s Day as a kind of New Year’s. A romantic reset for the year to come. Write down the highs and lows of love within the past year. What was good? What was difficult? What do you want in the future? To develop a romance with the self, consider the ways you have succeeded in love, and the ways in which you can support yourself as a partner might. Poly people often talk about this idea of being one’s own primary partner, in other words, offering themselves the kind of centering and care that they would experience in a primary relationship when they aren’t in one. At the risk of sounding totally cheesy, be the person you want for yourself. Engage in the activities that you would never let another person witness. For me, it’s lying naked in bed while eating hot dogs off my chest like an otter and listening to Tenacious D, but you do you.

I’m a queer man who has had a lifelong aversion to relationships—especially relationships built around possessiveness and control. My problem is no matter how upfront I am with my dates about being...well, a slut...they will start to form attachments and think that I will change my ways. And this isn’t just the women I’ve dated. This happens even with men I’ve met on the apps built for slutty hookups. When I (re)explain this to people, feelings are hurt and then I feel bad. I understand that sex for some people is really bonding, less so for people like me, yet I feel the guilt. Is there a way for me to stay true to myself and make sure there’s less hurt going around?

If your goal is just sex, I’d suggest doing the opposite of whatever Pavlov did to his dog. Don’t establish any kind of regularity or routine. Never bring food. Don’t let your lovers associate sex with acts of care. There’s certainly a cruel way to do this, to make sure not to engage in any kind of relationship-adjacent behaviors, but this often leads to confusion and hurt feelings. This impulse also makes sense: it’s hard to tell someone who’s developing feelings that you just don’t want that with them, but there’s a kinder way to do it.

Be up-front about your sluttiness, the fact that you don’t associate sex with love, and that you associate it with its God-intended purpose: coming hard. In the early 2000s, there was an explosion of films like No Strings Attached and Friends With Benefits that popularized the term friends with benefits. These movies (unsurprisingly) all ended with one person catching feelings, but it doesn’t have to be this way.

You say that sex isn’t bonding for you, but do you want any kind of bond? Do you want to hook up with the friends who you are hilariously romantically incompatible with but very sexually compatible with? Or do you want to hook up with people you don’t know outside of an app context. Having concurrent friends-with-benefits relationships is very different from a series of 1–3 night stand encounters.

Still, even though you have no intent to have a relationship with these people, I’d suggest treating your trysts the way you would treat a romantic relationship. Communicate. Think about what you need and want from each other. How often will you see each other? Will you sleep over? Will you tell other people about this person? And if you do develop a connection with someone you see frequently, check in with them regularly.

You can find like-minded sluts, you just need to treat these non-relationships a little more like relationships.