Valentine’s Day: Love, loss and the illusion we’re sold

Love can feel like trying to decode a language you were never taught. If your childhood home lacked affection, every romantic gesture feels like a mirror reflecting what you never received. When affection was inconsistent or absent, relationships in adulthood can feel like chasing a shadow.

That’s why, for many of us, love can feel like both a yearning and a wound. It’s not just chocolates and roses-it’s something deeper, more human, and still hard to understand. Embracing the so-called “month of love” can feel dishonest.

Valentine’s Day is celebrated on 14 February, during what many call the month of love. According toNPR, the origins of the day are far darker and more complex than the commercial romance we see today. As one scholar told NPR, the men “were drunk.

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They were naked”, and women would line up to be struck, believing it would make them fertile. That hardly sounds like the gentle love we package into heart-shaped boxes. In addition, the Catholic Church later sought to Christianise the pagan festival by establishing St Valentine’s Day, honouring one or more martyrs named Valentine who were executed on February 14th.

Over time, poets such as Geoffrey Chaucer linked the date to romantic love, and by the 19th century, mass-produced cards helped commercialise the day. In other words, what we now celebrate as romance evolved from ritual, martyrdom and marketing. That history resonates with me not because it trivialises love, but because it exposes how easily “love” gets packaged.

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