Make Valentine’s a day for you to love – whatever your status

I HAVE SPENT the last five years of my life learning how to endure Valentine’s Day, rather than celebrate it. While my loved-up girlfriends dined, I danced – or sometimes I passed up the idea. On more than one occasion, I’ve trekked home after a long day to my hot water bottle, my thermals and a movie. The serial singleton.

I not only learned, I mastered, the art of surviving the romantic holiday – whether that meant soaking in bubbles up to my chin or drinking cocktails at the bar with friends. I can’t say I celebrated the day but I did celebrate being alive. Loneliness never hurts as much when you choose to be single.

Fast forward to 2017. A long bout of serial singledom has been replaced with an other half who I can blissfully call mine. For the first time in a very long time, I’ll share it with someone and though the prospect of dressing up and wearing too much perfume and taking a fancy handbag out with me sounds pretty wonderful, it’s also rather frightening. No more thermal socks. No more sleeping in a bed all to myself. The chains of habit become strangely addictive, hard to break.

Of course, I’m acutely aware that I don’t have to ring in Valentine’s Day and turn it into a clichéd date – dinner and wine before retiring home. But this year I want nothing more than to have all of this.

I have found someone to abandon the comfort of my own home for but that still doesn’t make adjusting any easier.

What do I even wear on Valentine’s Day, when I’m not blissfully alone any more? It’s been so long that I can’t remember. I do know that I hate wearing red and I’m allergic to ruffles. Bouncy blow-dries don’t suit me and I’m not – nor will I ever be – into smoky eyes or scarlet lipstick. Does Valentine’s night frown upon those who wear black, do I lose serious style credential by not wearing colour? Surely the cold, rainy weather still allows for instinctive gravitation towards dark colours.

Can I wear sequins? Or feathers? Or can I surrender all the glam and simply wear a jumper and jeans. The answer is yes. Date nights range from lazy nights at home – which have the potential to be just as fabulous as a lavish dinner – to cocktails, a comedy club or a cosy night away. All require a certain panache but there are no swanky rules for what is expected of you. I could wax lyrical all day on Valentine’s Day – that is, embracing it in all its glory – but ultimately the joy you find in it, married, single or in a relationship, depends solely on your mind-set.

I have spent it as a lonely singleton in socks and pyjamas, as a trophy girlfriend in a fancy restaurant with expensive roses tucked underneath my seat and this year as a newly loved-up hopeful. I wouldn’t dare change any of it.

For the first time in a very long time, I’ll share Valentine’s Day with someone