Post: It’s almost Valentine’s Day, and I’m single and feeling extremely sad and very lonely.  I’ve only been able to find one event to meet other singles on Valentine’s Day, which awkwardly happens to be in a lingerie shop.  

What other events are happening in Calgary for singles to meet other singles?  I don’t want to be alone anymore.  It feels like a couple-dominated world, and all the couples events seem really cool and fun, but I don’t have a partner to go with.  Sigh…

Response:

Valentines Day can be a rather difficult, or potentially an even painful time, for many people who are not currently in a romantic relationship with anyone. One of the challenges is the bombardment of advertisements for events, experiences and ideas that seemingly only couples can do on that day. There is often also a rise in social media of posts and “snaps” from people within our social networks and popular media, celebrating couple-hood. It is almost impossible to escape from it! What that can is an increased sense of isolation and loneliness, a sense of being excluded from something that might be perceived as exclusive, and a hypersensitivity to anything regarding relationship status.

In a city of 1.24 million people, I can certainly understand feeling sad and lonely when you can’t find an event to attend in Calgary that is for people not in a relationship. It seems to make intuitive sense that there should be events specifically designed to connect people…perhaps celebrating good friendships, loving family relationships, and new possible friendships or romance. To respond to your post, I am curious if it would be interesting to expand on what you might be searching for on that specific day, the coming weekend, as well as how to continue to move forward in your life as a currently single person.

Firstly, coming from a sex-positive perspective, it might end up being a fun, enjoyable and informative evening at the event at the lingerie shop! Sometimes it’s exciting to take a deep breath and do something just slightly outside your comfort zone for an event geared to meeting people and go in with openness and curiosity. I also appreciate that it might be a bit awkward, so if you are wanting to get out to an event that night, you might want to search for events that are not just specifically marketed for “singles meeting singles”. Calgary Meetups has some groups geared towards people who are single or those who are interested in meeting different people around shared interests. We did a quick search of meetups and found a games and mingling option. As well, Avenue Magazine Calgary, provides six options for Valentines Day. Finally, your Students Association has three events posted on Valentines that provide opportunities to meet others. Another possible strategy is to focus and partake in activities or events in which you are genuinely interested, as this just raises the likelihood that you meet people you will connect with. So perhaps these are some interesting options worth trying.

Those suggestions are not intended to take away from how challenging it can be to meet new people within our current networks or to join pre-existing groups within Calgary.

Romantic love and connection may often take a longer time to both find and develop. To make it through Valentines Day specifically, you might want to choose to make it about celebrating, appreciating and acknowledging the various people that you do have in your life or, importantly, yourself. This might include reaching out to friends, family, co-workers who might also be struggling through this day and creating a day or night to really highlight your own interests, values, and connection to each other. Although it might seem that many events are geared specifically towards couples, they are often in no way actually limited to couples. So, why not just go, appreciate and enjoy the event or activity for itself with one of these people already in your network? You might decide to take February 14 as a day or night to do those things that you have wanted to do, and for which you have not made time.

In considering moving forward and finding love, please take a read on a previous blog post: Finding true love for Valentine’s

Sincerely,

Danni Lei, R. Psych. and Mirjam Knapik, R. Psych.