Sexting, cheating, Bjork, Joan Didion, grandmothers and (almost) all the universal things about love.
by Paige Pritchard
Valentine’s Day is the perfect late-winter landmark: close enough to spring that I can almost feel the sun at the end of the tunnel, but still deep enough in winter that my SAD levels are in peak need of a pick-me-up. Go ahead, give me a reason to purchase large quantities of chocolate and champagne in the middle of February, like I really needed one. You know what I don’t need? A significant other to buy them for me in celebration of a martyred saint who went rogue and married a bunch of soldiers in the Middle Ages. Come on, haven’t you ever heard of treat yo’ self? February 14th is prime time for it.
However, if you’re not into celebrating alone, this day is a great opportunity to finally emerge from your winter den of blankets and call someone up for a friend date. Or finally take your grandma out to lunch like you’ve been meaning to, for goodness sake. There are many different kinds of love out there to revel in besides romance, and I don’t see why Valentine’s Day should be confined to just the one. Skipping out on a day that celebrates love because you don’t have a current lover is like skipping out on Thanksgiving because the store was out of turkey – just settle for the ham and enjoy the festivities. We all know ham is far superior to turkey anyway.
Whether having your Valentine’s Day ham means sharing it with a significant other, sending a friend a love note, or throwing a Galentine’s party, it’s high time you embraced the holiday. In typical Riveter fashion, we’re celebrating with a Canon regaling the various loves we encounter every February 14. For full enjoyment, we recommend pairing it with some chocolate strawberries and sparkling wine, because we think you deserve it.
ON ROMANTIC LOVE: (OOEY, GOOEY LOVE STUFF, BUT WELL-WRITTEN AND POSSIBLY EVEN RELEVANT TO YOUR INTERESTS)
1. “Navigating Love and Autism” – Amy Harmon, The New York Times, December 26, 2011
“Yet as they reach adulthood, the overarching quest of many in this first generation to be identified with Asperger syndrome is the same as many of their nonautistic peers: to find someone to love who will love them back.”
2. “In Praise of Love: An Interview with Amy Van Doran” – Meredith Graves, The Hairpin, November 5, 2014
“When people say, ‘It’s so hard to date in New York,’ that’s because they’re throwing up a defense mechanism by having this idea of what their love should look like. We do not know what love looks like, we don’t know what magic looks like, we don’t know what God looks like, and what’s special is when it’s unexpected and makes your world bigger.”
3. “The Perfect Wife – How Edith Windsor fell in love, got married, and won a landmark case for gay marriage” – Ariel Levy, The New Yorker, September 30, 2013
“While everyone else went out dancing, she waited up all night for Spyer to arrive—she finally showed up the next afternoon. “I said, ‘Is your dance card full?’ ” Windsor recalled. “She said, ‘It is now,’ and I grabbed her and then we made love all afternoon.”
4. “Sex Does Not Thrive on Monotony” – Anais Nin, letter to “The Collector,” a client whom she wrote erotic fiction for, 1940s
“Only the united beat of sex and heart together can create ecstasy.”
ON MODERN LOVE: (DATING SITES! SEXTING! AND OTHER THINGS THE KIDS ARE DOING THESE DAYS)
5.“Love in the Time of No Time” – Jennifer Egan, The New York Times, November 23, 2003
“The defining fact of online dating is that it begins outside any context – historical, temporal, physical. To compensate, dating sites offer the old-fashioned comfort of facts: income, life goals, tastes in music, attitudes toward having children — the sorts of things you might wonder about a stranger you locked eyes with.”
6. “What I Wore to Fall In Love” – Sarah Nicole Prickett – Adult Mag
“But the night I show up to Black Market in basic-ass denim and boy’s clothes and a lick of feral eyeliner on my palest face, Jesse looks at me and thinks I’m the prettiest girl of his life. Prettier than the girls I was before, or – Maybe he really didn’t see me.”
7. “Moving for Love: The Modern Relationship Milestone” – Ann Friedman, NYMag, April 10, 2014
“Love from afar is fundamentally different in an era of texting and FaceTime, and a shocking 3 million married couples in the United States live apart.”
8. “Why Don’t We Have a Monogamy App?” – Ann Friedman, NYMag, February 14, 2014 (we’re talking about modern relationships, of course Ann Friedman is going to appear twice on this list)
“An impressive 74 percent of couples say the internet has had a positive impact on their relationship, according to new research from Pew. Maybe it’s time to really put it to work.”
ON FAMILIAL LOVE: (TRUE STORY – MY VALENTINE THIS YEAR IS MY 90-YEAR-OLD GRANDMA)
9. “My Foreign Mom” – Mary K. Choi, Aeon, April 24, 2013
“It’s a blessing that life is riddled with diversions. I work a lot. I’ve never had the weeks between Christmas and New Year’s off, but these days I don’t love money how I used to. My mom though, I’m crazy about.”
10. “Of Farmers and Fathers” – Jennifer Bowen Hicks, The Rumpus, May 8th, 2014
“If I could answer Dr. Mazeika’s question now, maybe I would say to define love is to limit it. Sometimes it is not where you expect it to be and other times it is a grace note in a strange place, entwined with feathers or a stranger or another good day on the job.”
11. “Knight of the Swan“ – Molly Minturn, The Toast, August 16, 2013
“How was it possible that I felt something along the lines of love when I looked at photos of Bobby Putnam, a man I’d never met, and like a student studying a complicated painting in a museum when looking at my grandfather? Which one was the stranger? Who was the blurry figure I imagined rescuing me as a child in the snowy field?”
ON LOVE LOST: (BECAUSE NOTHING MAKES YOU MORE AWARE OF YOUR WOUNDS LIKE A NATIONAL HOLIDAY CELEBRATING ROMANCE)
12. “Why We Cheat” – Lisa Taddeo, Esquire, April 2012
“I’ve never been cheated on, to the best of my knowledge, and I know women who would like me to feel it. I understand that. I’m sorry for them, and mindful it can happen to me. Because you are on one side, until you are on the other.”
13. “The Invisible Woman – A Conversation with Bjork” – Jessica Hopper, Pitchfork, January 21, 2015
“There’s so many songs about [heartbreak] that exist this in the world, because music is somehow the perfect medium to express something like this.”
ON FRIEND LOVE: (A SUBLIME AND INTOXICATING JOY)
14. “I Think I Am In Friend-Love With You” (comic) – Yumi Sakugawa, Sadie Magazine, 2012
15. “A Particular Kind of Self-Care: To a Year of Female Friendships” – Jenna Wortham, The Hairpin, December 31, 2013
“…this year was the year that I deliberately sought it out, invested my time and energy into cultivating relationships with women instead of with random dudes who weren’t clever enough to respond in kind to my cute emoji pictograms or appreciate sly Beyonce puns in my Instagram captions.”
16. “Growing Up” – Brittany Wilmes, The Butter, January 20, 2015
“We depended upon one another as though our lives had always been enmeshed…We met up for a concert, some of us driving three hours to reach the venue, reuniting with fierce hugs and overflowing picnic baskets. We slept on air mattresses in one another’s living rooms.”
ON SELF LOVE: (“I REALLY JUST FEEL LIKE DATING MYSELF RIGHT NOW.” – ME, EVERY VALENTINE’S DAY)
17. “Methods of Self-Care” – a downloadable zine by the amazing women over at Babe Vibes
18. “In the Name of Love” – Miya Tokumitsu, Jacobin Mag
“…if we acknowledged all of our work as work, we could set appropriate limits for it, demanding fair compensation and humane schedules that allow for family and leisure time.”
19. “On Self-Respect” – Joan Didion, Vogue, 1961
“To have that sense of one’s intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent.”
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Paige Pritchard is a contributing writer at The Riveter. Follow her on Twitter at @peapodpritchard.
