Murder Valentine’s Day

Mike Leitao ~ 02/19/2024

I realized I was way too positive in my last article. Spewing that much positivity is simply not me, so I must return to my roots of hating things. When trying to figure out what thing I wanted to hate today, I had some decent ideas like the NBA All-Star Weekend, Canadian bacon, and bank holidays. But then it dawned on me that something recently just happened that I hate with a burning passion, the corporate scam of a holiday we call Valentine’s Day. I hate it so much, and the fact it’s talked about as if it is a real holiday is infuriating. At least other corporate holidays like Black Friday accept and embrace the fact that they are a holiday with the sole purpose of taking your money. Valentine’s Day wraps itself in a fake cloak disguised around love and joy when in reality it’s all about people spending a shit-ton of money for no damn reason.

Let me preface this by saying my hatred isn’t because I’m some lonely virgin who has never felt a woman’s touch before and in turn hates anything that relates to love or relationships. I am in a loving relationship where although I am hit quite often, and to be honest it’s normally deserved, I am still a happy individual. The hatred for this holiday comes for two reasons. The first, I already said, this holiday is just a corporate scam to make people feel obligated to spend a bunch of money on their girls so they don’t get harassed for skipping such a beautiful holiday. Seriously, think about the amount of extra money guys put out for this holiday that really doesn’t mean anything. You have to go get flowers, then go get some type of chocolate or another gift, then you have to go out to dinner and it can’t just be any dinner but it has to be a nice dinner, and then you have to take her for dessert afterwards. It ends up stacking up rather quickly and then all the sudden you just spent a lot of money on a random-ass day simply because if you didn’t, it would’ve resulted in a crying girlfriend and having people all over social media call you an awful person who should kill themselves.

So when you balance the risk and reward, it ends up being a pretty good idea to just bite the bullet and do what you have to. Here’s a simple thought though, why can’t Valentine’s Day be for the guys. More often than not, the man is already shelling out most of the money and time for things for his girlfriend, why not make a specific day that instead of it being about boyfriends doing that even more, we focus on the girls repaying the favor towards us men. I don’t need any flowers or any gifts or anything, but why not switch it up and you take me out to a nice dinner. It’s 2025, these women all work full-time jobs and can certainly support themselves, they don’t need a special day for men to treat them with some type of special privilege, this should be a holiday for the men that is all about giving back to us guys for everything we do for the ladies.

Now obviously, the holiday will never change and so men will never get to get repaid for everything we do for our women. However, even if we were able to somehow magically change the holiday’s focus, it still wouldn’t change the fact that I would despise it for one very simple reason, people shouldn’t need a random fake holiday to be the reason they go and treat their girlfriend. Honestly, using Valentine’s Day as an excuse to actually plan a nice date is pretty low effort in my opinion. Sure, you’ve been married for years on end and have kids and all that adult jazz and yeah having a specific day basically set for you to have a nice romantic date night is nice, but for the rest of us who aren’t there yet let me give you a piece of advice, just take the bare minimum of thinking ahead and plan a date on a random day. If you polled 100 women on if they would prefer a very nice Valentine’s Day date or have their boyfriends plan a date that might not be as nice or perfect but was spontaneous and out of the blue, most women would pick the latter. Contrary to what most high school boys think, women actually aren’t that hard. Instead of waiting for the day that all the restaurants are packed and everyone else is trying to be romantic, pick a random Thursday and get your girlfriend flowers and take her to go get a nice dinner or to a show. Simple gestures like that mean the world to them, and unfortunately for them they don’t even realize that Valentine’s Day is taking it away from them. That’s what makes Valentine’s Day the perfect definition of a bad holiday, both parties are actually losing. Guys are forced to spend a bunch of money on overpriced and overcrowded things while women lose out on those spontaneous dates because there is a date planned for those things.

Ah man, it feels good to hate again, always remember hating gets you farther in life then loving. As always, I never pose a problem without also proposing a solution, and I think this might be the easiest one yet. Get rid of the holiday all together. Just can it outright. If women are worried that it means they ain’t gonna get the attention they want, they are probably not with the right person to start with. And fellows, I’m saving your wallet some serious cash, and that is how you turn a lose-lose into a win-win for everyone.