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It’s Valentine’s Day—a day we nationally recognize as a celebration of romantic love where couples honor the love and care they’ve found in one another, which is a beautiful thing. Rituals of gratitude are an important part of building loving and sustainable relationships, and I believe that we should always make space to celebrate all the ways we love and are loved—especially as Black folks who have had to find ways to love through the countless horrors of slavery, Jim Crow and so many other communal experiences that have forced familial separations. What breaks my heart, though, every single Valentine’s Day, is how it ravages the heads and hearts of many women who have not found the romantic partnership they desire. There is something about V Day that creates a certain kind of hopelessness in single women. It’s as though the holiday mocks the ache of our loneliness; it picks at our wounds around ideas about our worthiness and desirability; it makes us second guess our decisions in past relationships by making us wonder whether we should have settled for less than we know we deserve. What I believe to be worse than feeling lonely or feeling hopeless around V Day is that so many women—who are loved by so many people in their lives in non-romantic ways—feel that they are unloved and maybe unlovable because the only love we as a society consistently celebrate (or even acknowledge) is romantic love.
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The idea that romantic love is the only love that truly matters is rooted in what many have come to describe as toxic monogamy culture. To be clear, toxic monogamy does not instruct us to dishonor monogamy. Even as we become more curious about other kinds of romantic commitments as a society (like polyamory for instance), most people prefer monogamous romantic relationships. As someone who has chosen more non-traditional relationship commitments in the past, I often return to monogamy myself. What I’ve learned through being open to non-monogamous relationships is that monogamy is a choice I get to make or not make. It does not have to be forced on me or the people I love and choosing it or not choosing it doesn’t make me complete or incomplete. I view monogamous commitments as something I may want, instead of something I desperately need in order to feel worthy of love. I am often as satisfied with being single as I am with being coupled, and much of this is because I’ve spent a lot of time (and money in therapy!) learning to love and honor myself and learning to love and honor those who I am not romantically connected to (like my friends and my family).
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Dr. Jenn M. Jackson—who is an abolitionist–centered professor, writer and organizer—broke toxic monogamy culture down quite thoroughly in a recent TikTok video. Dr. Jackson, who often uses social media to analyze cultural and social justice issues, lays out three ways that monogamy culture can be toxic:
First, she argues that our obsession with choosing our “one” or being chosen as someone else’s “one” becomes too much of a priority in our lives and at way too young an age—I’ll add especially for girls and women. From childhood, according to Dr. Jackson, we are taught that we should be developing ourselves to be someone’s life partner instead of using that time and energy to develop other, equally if not more important, parts of ourselves. Imagine if, from our youth, we focused more on figuring out who we are, what we want and how to enjoy our lives in solitude? After all, as the late great feminist icon bell hooks reminds us, “Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.”
Second, Dr. Jackson believes that toxic monogamy culture teaches us that when we find our “one” that we should deprioritize our other relationships. Too often, we are so focused on finding romantic partnership, that we neglect developing (and maintaining) other important relationships in our lives. I’ve been guilty of this in the past—being so wrapped up in my romantic relationship that I neglected meaningful friendships—friendships that have outlasted most of my romantic relationships and, as I reflect, have been way more fulfilling and supportive. In the above-linked Tik Tok video, Dr. Jackson also reasons that when we don’t work to develop relationships outside of romantic partnerships, we end up feeling isolated when we struggle in the romantic relationships that we’ve chosen. This kind of isolation can perpetuate abuse and make us feel that we have no one to turn to when we are experiencing harm from our partners. Only centering romantic relationships, and the isolation that can accompany doing so, can also make it very difficult for us to recover from romantic relationships that have ended—something we should especially consider if we contemplate high divorce rates in the U.S.
Third, Dr. Jackson prompts us to consider that toxic monogamy culture teaches us (again, I’ll add it especially teaches women) that we are failures if we are not in romantic relationships or if our romantic relationships end. Toxic monogamy culture gaslights us into believing that we are only worthy of love and goodness when we are chosen by someone. We can be successful in every other kind of relationship that we experience—whether that be the relationships we build within our families, friendships or in our work—but if we are not romantically coupled, we feel like we are inadequate. And when we experience a lot of breakups (which, honestly, is just a part of daring to date and be in relationship), we feel that we are broken.
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As we celebrate Valentine’s Day this year, we should be intentional about sifting through our feelings, if we are not in the romantic relationships we desire. We should ask ourselves if we are sad, frustrated or hopeless because we don’t have romantic love in our lives, or are we just subscribing to a harmful and toxic monogamy culture that won’t allow us to view love in the expansive ways it exists. We can learn to desire partnership without drowning in that desire. We are worthy and whole, just as we stand, whether we are single or coupled.
Josie Pickens is an educator, organizer and culture critic who has been researching and writing about love, pleasure and relationships, for more than a decade. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram at @jonubian for more musings.
