This is: F*ck Romance
By Row Sullivan
In my time at The Rival, I haven’t exactly been a fan of Valentines Day. Like at all. This year, I’m the only one of my friends not currently in a relationship, so perhaps that disdain has only grown- as much as I am of course happy for all my friends in happy relationships. With that, here’s some songs for all the other chronically singles, whether you’re struggling to find romance, don’t want romance, or are on a good day indifferent to the proposition all together. Valentines Day is just a capitalist scam anyways.
You can listen to the full playlist here.
“I don’t mind to live all on my own- and I never did. And I don’t care to feel like I belong- but you always did”
Maybe you want a relationship one day, maybe you don’t. Either way, you’ve realized there’s no point in forcing it. You know that you’re able to rely on yourself and still be happy. It can sometimes be frustrating when other people don’t seem to get it, or even the lack of other people that seem to feel the same way you do. But you know yourself (and that people without significant others tend to report being happier than their partnered peers).
“Everybody thinks they’re meant to be, and yeah they know but honestly who cares?”
Who decided that you can’t be absolutely obsessed with someone in a non-romantic type of way? Love comes in all shapes and sizes, there’s no reason a relationship has to be romantic just because of the way it looks on the outside. Relationships can and should be fluid beyond the typical frameworks we try to categorize them into. It doesn’t really matter what you label it (as long as you’re on the same page, that is…), and I feel this song captures that fluidity well.
“You left me no choice but to stay here forever”
Can you really do a Valentine’s Day playlist without at least one Taylor song? I realize that from her point of view, “Right Where You Left Me” is a song about feeling stuck and unable to move on after a breakup. I also found that it can capture the feeling when literally all your friends end up in relationships while you’ve never quite understood love much at all. You’re happy for them, of course, but sometimes you feel static, like you’re missing out on something, left behind in a moment of childhood. And when there’s the occasional Friday night when they all planned date nights with their significant others, you’ll be patiently waiting right where they left you for girls’ night the following evening.
“So don't look at me like that, eyes on the pavement, Now your legs are shaking, Hands off kid or you'll wakе up in my basement, And all the fеds'll have to break-in”
Look. This song is about eating boys, which I suppose does constitute cannibalism. I apologize to any well-meaning boys reading this (who are we kidding, I don’t think straight men read The Rival). At the end of the day though, you’re a badass feminist icon who doesn’t need or want attention from anyone. The boys (who are unfortunately too immature to become men) should be quaking if they even think about trying anything with you. How do you smash the patriarchal archetype of love more than that?
“I wanna feel all that love and emotion, be that attached to the person I’m holding”
Lastly, a song for the yearners. When romance is set out to be the standard, the most intimate we can be with a person, it’s hard not to want it. Whether we want a relationship someday or not, it’s natural to wonder if we’re missing out, to want to experience what our friends seem to all be experiencing. And if it’s meant to be, it will happen (one day). Maybe you never want or need a relationship, but it can still be hard to not even have someone so much as on the radar when everyone else seems so magnetically attached to each other.