Year after year my therapy practice gets a big boost right after the holiday. Some blame it on Hallmark cards and the media.
Despite the fact that Americans spend nearly 14 billion dollars on Valentine’s Day, many people report feeling disappointed and sometimes even devastated on Valentine’s Day. This is often due to 3 things—unrealistic expectations, an inability to assess your relationship or a lack of someone to love.
Unrealistic expectations
Media hype has many people anticipating “the perfect day, filled with love, the perfect person, the perfect gift and unending romance.”
Unrealistic expectations like this can be a downer for any couple, even if they are relatively happy with each other prior to The Big Day. Given that many relationships suffer from neglect during most of the year, Valentine’s Day often becomes the focus for relationship repair. But if the couple has remained unconnected most of the year, there is no special place, meal, gift or lovemaking that will fill their need for closeness–only a relationship that is nurtured year round can offer it. Consequently, Love Day brings sadness to the surface as each person quietly focuses on the restaurant, the roses, or the chocolate instead of their partner. Tomorrow they will boast about their Love Connection to their friends and colleagues. The sadness within the relationship will become a distant memory until next year, or will it?
Inability to assess your relationship Many people lose their objectivity when they fall in love. They miss or ignore cues that indicate that in their relationship only one party is in love rather than both.
If you are the person that over invests, settles for less or nothing at all, then National Love day is likely to offer you a wake-up call!
Since no one can be at two places at one time, someone will be disappointed. If your love had an emergency call from his/her long lost aunt and will be unavailable until Feb 15th, over sleeps and leaves their cell phone in the car over night, or gets stuck in the elevator over night, then you missed some cues. Your love has a love and it is not you! 
It is extremely important to stay Awake and Alive in your relationship. Blind love is not healthy love. Your gut can offer you important cues and all that you need to know, but you must Listen!!
Lack of Someone to Love For many people the holiday blues begins with Thanksgiving and culminates with Valentine’s Day. If you are someone who hates the holidays, especially Valentine’s Day, because you are alone and have no one to love, your focus is on the wrong person. It is not about finding the right person, it is about Being the right person.
If you focus on loving yourself so that you can become the best person that you can be, then you will attract the right person. Refocus your time and energy on finding and doing things that make you happy and fulfilled. Remember, the relationship that you have with yourself greatly impacts the connections that you make with others. Learn to love yourself minus the frills, love will follow.
I would love to hear about your love connections or lack of connections.