I do not like Valentine's Day.

I am not single and I will not annoy you with the over dramatic complaint that it should be called "Single's Awareness Day." I am also not a feminist and I like the thought of a gentleman taking me on a date and holding the door for me. Despite the fact that I have dated a handful of worldly disappointments, I am not so scorned that I loathe love in its entirety. I love love and everything about it.

I compete with the original artists of most love songs in-car karaoke, I enjoy romantic comedies, I fantasize about kissing in the rain, and I have my entire wedding planned on Pinterest. Needless to say, I am the sappiest of hopeless romantics.

I wasn't even fully aware of my intense disapproval of celebrating the love-observing holiday until recently. This year, my boyfriend asked me if I wanted to go to dinner and make further plans for Valentines Day. My first reaction was, "Yes, absolutely." I would love to because, despite the way that he smells after fraternity intramurals, I adore my boyfriend. As a 21-year-old college student, you don't expect much out of the opposite sex when it comes to planning, romance, or deep displays of affection. So, naturally, I was thrilled that he even acknowledged a holiday that holds so much platitude at all. However, later that evening, as I lay in bed thinking about where we would go and what our cheesy cliche evening would consist of, I realized that it all felt forced and more stressful than romantic. Then nauseating thoughts of Valentine's Day, of why we celebrate it and what it all means, flooded my overly late-night thoughts.

I have concluded that, plainly, Valentine's Day is a bogus Hallmark holiday for lovers to display glorified parades of affection to one another when you should want to do that in your own special way every day, anyway. If you require an excuse to show your significant other bonafide love and affection, instead of demonstrating it daily, then maybe you shouldn't be celebrating the holiday together. Valentine's Day unintentionally makes all gestures insincere. I don't want to sit at a table that I had to make a reservation for a decade ahead of time in order to hear the couple in the booth behind me profess their undying love for each other. The fact that every couple who you know is doing exactly what you're doing at that moment takes all of the potential romance out of it. I hate to sound like a "hipster," but the red heart, white dove, winged man-baby commercialism is unsettling and about as "mainstream" as it gets.

That's not to mention the undeniable pressure and nonsensical expectations that go along with the "celebration." There's a standard for just about everything today, but I do not think that how my partner shows me affection should be one of them. First and most importantly, an expression of passion should not have a dollar sign on it. On February 14, "love" is expected to be shown with roses, chocolate, and jewelry. It's completely unoriginal and ultimately superficial. People say and show affection in different ways and that's what makes them, who they are as a couple and what will ultimately determine if you are capable of a functioning relationship. Whether or not you can accept and communicate with each other's own personal "love language" is very vital. For me, "I love you" is sharing my waffle fries and pretending that the tragic excuse for a joke that you told is laughable and comedic, not heart shaped containers and a fancy dinner reservation.

The yearly calendar shouldn't have to set aside a specific day to rekindle a failing couple's flame nor should it create an excuse for a thriving relationship to go under the unnecessary stress of planning a quixotic evening that they could have planned at any time that they choose. So, no, Cupid did not miss my chest, I just would rather eat an ironically heart shaped pizza from Papa John's while watching endless amounts of "New Girl" and calling Valentine's Day a normal Sunday.