The Most Important Relationship You Will Ever Have

Well, it’s that time of year again. Restaurants get busier, florists flourish, and it seems that every store is decked in pink and red. Commercials are either about tax season or about various expensive gifts to give your significant other. With all this love in the air, it can be exhausting to be single around Valentine’s Day.

I distinctly remember when I was single in high school and college. I referred to Valentine’s Day as “Single Awareness Day,” watching my coupled friends on social media celebrate their love with, I’ll admit it, a tinge of bitterness in my heart. It really bothered me that there was an entire day devoted to people who were happily in such important relationships.

Of course, my opinion drastically changed when I, myself, was in a relationship. That bitterness in my heart melted away like dark chocolate. Valentine’s Day was suddenly a wonderful day, an opportunity to celebrate the love I had with my partner…until I didn’t have a partner on Valentine’s Day again.

Back and forth. From cynic to hopeless romantic. From Single Awareness Day to Valentine’s Day. All dependent on whether or not I was sharing my life with a romantic partner on February 14th of that particular year. At some point, it almost seemed silly to celebrate Valentine’s Day with a partner who might not even be in my life when Valentine’s Day rolled around the next year.

And then something clicked.

There was one relationship I had that would never be broken. One relationship that, no matter what happened during the rest of the year, would always be ready to be celebrated on Valentine’s Day. And that was my relationship with myself.

It has been a long-standing tradition in Western society that coupling up and being in a relationship with someone else is one of the most important things you can do. But we often forget about the importance of our relationship with ourselves. From the day we are born to the day we die, the relationships we have with ourselves are shifting, growing, and changing. It is the one relationship you will have for the entirety of your life. So it stands to reason that it would be a relationship worth celebrating, say, on a day all about celebrating important relationships.

Regardless of whether or not you are celebrating with a partner this year, I urge you to take the opportunity to focus on your relationship with yourself. Take time this Valentine’s Day to heal, feed, and cherish that relationship. Buy yourself flowers. Take a luxurious bath. Spend quality time doing things that make you feel fulfilled and taken care of. Show appreciation to yourself for everything you have done for yourself over the years. Give yourself the gift of unconditional self-love. Because the most important relationship you will ever have is already in your grasp and always has been.