It is a truth universally acknowledged that February 14th constitutes a controversial holiday. For happy couples, Valentine’s Day presents the opportunity to create romantic memories with someone you love. (The chocolates, flowers, and comically oversized stuffed animals are optional.) But for the singletons of the world, Valentine’s Day typically means throwing on that old, stained college sweatshirt that never leaves the house, devouring an ooey, gooey ice cream sundae, and ritualistically re-watching How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days.
As for myself, Valentine’s Day is the perfect excuse to find humor in the epic romantic failures littering my past.
Because, like Elizabeth Bennet, I dearly love to laugh.
Most of the boys I’ve dated have been some variation of Mr. Collins. When I was sixteen, it was the guy who, after ambushing me with my first-ever kiss, promptly declared, “Some advice for next time—you should pucker your lips more.” When I was nineteen, it was the guy whose idea of a smashing first date was watching twelve straight episodes of How I Met Your Mother while petting the top of my head like I was a cat. When I asked him, “Why are you petting the top of my head like I’m a cat? It’s weird,” he merely replied, “LOL, am I not allowed to do that?” and continued on his merry way.
And when I was twenty, for the pièce de résistance of “little delicate compliments which are always acceptable to ladies,” it was the guy who, within about ten minutes, managed to reassure me that he was “not trying to fatten me up” when I politely declined to sample his ice cream, thank me for being his “female accompaniment for the night,” and nauseatingly refer to me as, and I do quote, “my little English princess.”
For the record, I did seriously consider walking home alone after dark instead of suffering through the car-ride back with him.
What appeared to be my greatest chance for Austenian romance came over two years ago, in the form of the most eligible bachelor in my university’s English department. He was the perfect Romantic hero: intelligent, well-read, endearingly funny, slightly older than me, and of course, devastatingly attractive—vaguely like a young James Marsden á la 27 Dresses.
We met in a class on literary theory and criticism, and I was instantly smitten. Having never considered myself particularly “cool” or “alluring,” I assumed he would look right through me. But to my surprise, the opposite occurred. He began speaking to me before class, not just about our lessons, but about our favorite books, movies, pets, hopes, and dreams for the future. He made it a point to catch me in the hallway afterward, too, gallantly walking me to the dorms, the library, or wherever else I was headed next.
And the more I got to know him, the more I began to like him not for his polished exterior, but for the real person underneath, who listened to Fleetwood Mac in the car and wanted to adopt a cat named Cabbage, who stole my phone when I wasn’t looking to take silly selfies for me to find later, and who always had something insightful to say in class.
Naturally, in the two semesters we carried on like this, I never told him how I felt. It seemed like a preposterous idea at the time. Austenian heroines don’t dash madly about, declaring love to their heroes! But his enthusiastic behavior had me convinced that he was two steps away from sweeping me off my proverbial feet.
So imagine my surprise when I returned to the university after our next winter break to find him—by all accounts of departmental speculation—romantically attached to another girl in our shared senior seminar. The knife of realization plunged cruelly into my chest. How long had this been going on? Were there any warning signs?
I felt like Marianne Dashwood standing outside Combe Magna in the rain, shouting, “Willoughby! Willoughby!” I imagined my heart wound festering, transforming into a putrid fever that kept me bedridden for the rest of the semester. Embarrassingly, I did skip class a few times on account of the roiling ache in my stomach that worsened whenever I thought of them cozied up together in the back of the classroom.
It’s funny how heartbreak feels tangible when you're young, like a writhing, live organism thrust into your hands that you don’t know how to discard. Even though you never wanted it in the first place, it feels wrong to chuck it unceremoniously on the ground, and it’s almost frightening to think of what might happen when you finally let go. Because letting go means facing the fact that you wasted time wanting something you weren’t meant to have. Letting go means it’s over—no second chances, no romantic finale.
Letting go means accepting that life isn’t a Jane Austen novel. In the real world, people are messy, unpredictable, and never as transparent as you want them to be. I wanted so badly to experience my own, real-life love story, inspired by those I’d seen unfold so beautifully on page and screen, that I idealized my Willoughby, as perfect as he might have seemed, into the perfect person for me. But in truth, he wasn’t an infallible Romantic hero: he had plenty of flaws, and even the occasional bad hair day.
When the rose-colored glasses came off, my heartbreak was quiet, more like Elinor’s than Marianne’s. I unfollowed my would-be Willoughby on social media and deleted his number from my phone. I never told my friends how much I’d liked him, or how badly it hurt to know he didn’t feel the same way. Looking back now, I realize that I wasted a lot of time and effort trying to pretend I wasn’t in pain. I thought I was being brave by swallowing my feelings and feigning indifference, but it’s not brave to pretend love and romance don’t matter to you.
It’s brave to admit that they do, even if you haven’t found them yet.
Despite her reputation as the greatest romance novelist of all time, Jane Austen never married. She received only one proposal in her life, from Harris Bigg-Wither, a wealthy gentleman whose fortune could have saved her, her sister, and her mother from poverty following her father’s death. But while “the advantages he could offer, & her gratitude for his love, & her long friendship with his family” initially induced Jane to accept, she awoke the next morning and broke off the engagement, having realized she could never truly love him: “she was miserable & [knew] that the place & fortune which would certainly be his, could not alter the man.”
Like Jane Austen, who valued herself and her own commitment to love—real love, the kind that's worth waiting for, not born of circumstance or convenience—I refuse to settle for the first guy who is interested or available. Jane was twenty-seven years old when she turned down Bigg-Wither’s proposal; I’m only twenty-two. If she could continue to believe in and write about love and romance despite her status as a life-long bachelorette, then so can I.
I’m not afraid to admit that I have my own flaws when it comes to dating. I am stubborn, judgmental, terrified of commitment, and I often rely on humor to mask the severity of my emotions. I’ve ghosted my fair share of guys in the past, and the last time I tried to flirt with someone, I got so nervous that I accidentally gave him a long-winded explanation of English grammatical conventions instead. Clearly, I’m not perfect.
But Jane Austen never wrote about perfect people falling in love, did she? She wrote about beautifully complex, imperfect individuals choosing one another, day after day, despite their personal defects and the external obstacles threatening to drive them apart.
So, if you aren’t celebrating this Valentine’s Day with Mr. Darcy, know that Jane would be proud of you for valuing yourself enough to believe in a love worth waiting for. And whether or not you’re destined for romance of Austenian proportions, “perfect happiness” is out there somewhere, ready for you, if only you’re brave enough to seek it.
Letter excerpt: Austen, Caroline. Letter to Emma “Amy” Austen-Leigh. 17 June 1870.
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Oh, bravo, Sarah! A very entertaining read ;)