There are plenty of reasons to dislike Valentine’s Day—it’s a con job for florists and the greeting card industry, it’s impossible to ‘get right,’ there’s no set list for expectations (like how on Christmas, there are presents, or on Thanksgiving, there is food).

But truth be told, the reason I can’t stand it is that it’s like Columbus Day in that it’s a completely arbitrary holiday that makes a whole bunch of people feel like shit. Like, Veteran’s Day doesn’t shame you for not having signed up for the Marines. New Year’s is literally about a clock ticking. The message of President’s Day isn’t, Well, you should have made something more of your life and maybe we’d be celebrating you.

Valentine’s Day is basically, Oh you’re in a relationship? Good luck getting this one right. Maybe you should reconsider the entire thing. Maybe you are the problem. Oh, and that whole giant crowd, you all are single? Fuck you. There’s just nothing nice about it.

The kind of romantic love that Valentine’s Day ‘celebrates’ is difficult enough to come across, much less maintain for any length of time. The entire notion of having a ‘holiday’ for it is insane, because that sort of hyper-focus is so reductive to the idea of love that it either complicates existing relationships or compounds loneliness. All of that is to say the very nature of this day is antithetical to the concept of love, and we’d all be better off if this shit was just scrubbed from any and all future calendars.