There’s something deeply flawed about Valentine’s Day. It’s surprising, given that we’re talking about an entire holiday devoted to having fun with someone you find attractive, consuming decadent food and alcohol, exchanging cards, gifts, and statements of devotion, and, in all likelihood, getting laid. From that perspective, the idea that a ritual like this could be a bad thing seems ridiculous.

Still, here we sit, cursing the Hallmark executive who injected this holiday into an artery of mainstream culture. Maybe it’s the giant chasm between what Valentine’s Day should be — a day of celebrating love and expressing one’s caring and devotion toward others — versus what it is: a deformed bastard child of social one-up-ism and shameless merchandising. Somehow, we’ve sapped the joy from the one day of the year actually designated for feeling safe and loved, and turned it into a hollow husk of buying, obligation, and inevitable disappointment. The obligatory flowers and chocolates followed by the forced dinner at a restaurant slammed with couples “paying for their romantic experience;” the relentless third party pressure to give the “right” present, eat the “right” gourmet victuals, wear the “right” lacy lingerie; the face-rubbing in the fact that, no matter what, you will never attain the idyllic relationship bliss of those couples in the ads for diamonds and luxury cars that run every 3 minutes throughout the month of February.

And then, of course, there’s the “significance” stamp that’s slapped onto the front cover. Female? Single? Welcome to the one day of the year that will crank open your throat and force feed you its recipe for self-debasement. Just try not digesting the insecurity of being alone, the unshakable sense that something deep and intangible is wrong with you, the socially-mandated idea that some cosmic joke or genetic deficiency must have left you and you alone destined for permanent exile from intimacy. What’s not to love?

Still, despite it all, there’s some solace: any holiday that condones abject chocolate-gorging can’t be all bad.