I am not starting this thread so people feel bad. My idea is that we call carry this stuff with us and if we put it out here and give it air, it will relieve us, like the story of the Hydra.

In my case, I have a had a lot of bad V days but most notable was right after I married my 2nd husband. I had just been married a few weeks and we were already struggling. He was out of town for work - I went to AZ to see, Annalisa because I was reeling so badly. I mean, I'd just gotten married and pretty much woke up in a nightmare I could not even understand.

So anyway, I was in AZ and my husband was coming home the day before Valentine's Day.  Annalisa and I went shopping for him and I mean, we went shopping.  We really put everything we had all together (my heart and her taste) and got this guy very special gifts, 4 or 5 of them as I recall.  It was a gesture... put problems aside. He was great romantic himself - given make huge gestures as well so I guess the idea was that we'd put the fairy tale back on track.

Valentine's Day came and I broke out his presents which he opened one but one.  He liked all his stuff and then had to reveal that he had not gotten me anything. Not even a card.

I just stared. I am not a person you have to buy things for so I just didn't know what to say.  He said he did not get me anything because we were fighting and then started yelling. I could see he felt bad which was not my intention. He wound up super pissed and brooding and this is when I knew that we we never going to make it.  We filed for divorce about 2 weeks later.

(((Elsa)))

I can't think of anything of that calibre but I didn't like being alone last year's Valentine's Day.

Last V day before I separated from my ex - he spent it out of town with his mistress. I really didn't know what true depression was until that weekend. I didn't want to get out of bed and slept until I started having nightmares about them.

So grateful I'm divorced now.

(((everyone)))

I was stood-up/dumped for V-Day once. But I wasn't upset about it.

((((Everyone))))

Ugh.... Not sure I could pinpoint it down to one. Seriously, Valentines days generally sucks for me! Not sure why. Even this year probably wont be so great, I'm attached but he's out of state. It's our first Valentines so I don't know what to expect, and don't want to get my hopes up.

Blargh!

*flashes back to high school*

Nothing outrageous, just lots of years watching other girls get flowers.

The V Day just before my marriage in April 81 - we'd been been together about 15/16 months. He felt he had to take me out to dinner, and hardly said a word all evening, hating being in a restaurant and hating having to pay to eat out. I love restaurants, always have...I loved lots of things he didn't :(  and silent men drive me nuts!

I knew by then it was going to be a hard road but I couldn't really see any way off the highway - he'd moved country for me, given up the booze for me, he adored me. So I persuaded myself I could make it work and married him anyway...

the last time i got a valentine was in 3rd grade..  when everyone int he class was required to give one to everyone else.......

i've been making valentines day happen for other people for the past 7 years. 

the worste was the year we had a massive snow storm.  it snowed about 3.5 feet here.  i was working for a florist at the time, managing her greenhouses.  i was out deliverying..  the van went off the road.  i ended up having to leave it in a field.  the florits lost over $9000 worth of roses just because no one could get out to buy them.  then, the weight of the snow colapsed one of the green houses..  the next day, the power failed and the other greenhouses froze.  this was less than a month after the owners husband died suddenly of a pulminary embolism after 26 years of marriage. 

there was nothing we could do. 

this year, i am already facing oposition from my stores about when and how the holiday displays will be set up.  i am stretched too thin..

the scorp left for the city tonight.  he will be there for work until next week...  and astrologically?  my chart is going to be pummeled between now and next wednesday evening..  just in time for it all to end. 

i don't know if anything can be worse than the valentines snow storm.. but this year might be close. 

Awww rant!! Feel so sorry you're not getting the emotional support you deserve. But your stabbed Cupid flat on his face the other day made me roll about laughing - so bless you for venting!

For ranty

*hugs*

here is another image of my sentiments for Vday

((((((((everyone)))))))))))))))

My worse Valentine's day was kinda weird.  I was really close with my hubby and I wanted to be in a relationship with him but he didn't want to be in a long distance relationship.  Anyway though my bday is the day before V-day and on that day I got a package in the mail where he sent me some gifts and a whole bunch of cards (bday and Vday).  It was so sweet and it made me happy but I was VERY hung up on the fact that we weren't "together".  I spent most of the day talking to him on the phone but it was depressing for me.

and a particular favorite

I <3 your pics Rant. :)

I can't remember a bad V-Day...it's my parents' wedding anniversary, so that's what I always associate it with...gotta call Mom and Dad...

Hmmm.... 90% of all V-days for me have been as a "single". Even during the 4.2yrs of marriage it was alone.... even with her in same room.

So.... it's better for me to just wish everyone else a happy holiday. I'll admitt.... I love how the stores get all "dolled up" for each holiday (as grandma used to say).

..i'm the one who gets the stores "dolled up"..  not much fun on this end. 

I was going through a divorce and working in a bridal shop part-time while finishing college.  SO much fun putting the finishing touches on Valentine's Day weddings while my own had just been shot to hell.  Last year's was fun, too.  Had just gotten a restraining order on a former fiance while current beau was a Jehovah's Witness kid and just couldn't bear doing holiday anything.  I have my daughter for Valentine's Day this year, and I'm going to give her candy and take her out to a nice dinner.

I told Virgo Mars all I wanted were some flowers. He bought me a potted plant.

Epic fight.

It seems stupid now, but it really chaffed me at the time. That plant was symbolic of everything that was wrong with us and it set me off. 

I've never had a bad Valentine to be honest. I've had a bad Christmas though, but I'll save it for another time or thread, because this is about Valentine's day.

Worst one? The year where my then-bf was on a regular trip for work, and I got chocolates in the mail. Very odd as we never exchanged gifts for valentine's day before. And then a few weeks later I discovered he had been cheating on me with another woman, a skanky passport-grubbing colleague (and I can say this because I know this for a fact) on every one of those trips, and he felt particularly guilty because it was valentine's and sent me the gift.

Put a whole new meaning on V-Day gifts that time. Got another gyno checkup fast, was safe. Phew.

the worst one was when I was 19, had no money so I spent the day making my boyfriend chocolate chip cookies.  I even spelled out his name in cookies and made a fancy presentation out of it.  well, he completely forgot it was Valentines Day, and didn't even care about my "gift".  Hardly acknowledged it, or me, and went about the rest of his evening. Yeah, needless to say, that relationship didn't last!! 

Junior year, I walk into the gym and there sits my boyfriend with a dozen roses. I'd never gotten any before and was embarassed and elated all at the same time. I lugged them around until lunchtime which is when he broke up with me for another girl. I was confused..why would you get me flowers then? "I already had them and I didn't want them to go to waste"

...couldn't give them to your mom or something dude? Or wait 24 freakin hours until V day was over? Or break up with me YESTERDAY..wth?

How embarrassing...

I did know the girl and I liked her! I asked her that day, "Do you really want to be with someone who is going to do THIS to you?"

Of course, that wasn't going to happen to her..lol

Argh, what ghastly stories! I've always hated Valentine's Day, ever since I only got one card each year aged c14, 15 or 16, and knew it was from my Dad, when most of my friends at school were getting loads... It's always been a big strain! Hugs to all who suffer ;)

In 7th grade, I sat across from this kid in science class and we really hit it off. He was in the popular crowd but had taken a liking to me and I thought, this is it. I am going to have an awesome boyfriend who is totally out of my league. On Valentine's Day, he sent me a carnation in homeroom (everyone could buy carnations and send them to people) and I was completely and utterly elated, blissed out, with hearts popping out of my eyeballs. I then went into the hallway and saw him standing there with this other girl from my grade. He had just asked her out and everyone was swooning over them as a new couple!!!!!!! Oh my God. I will never forget how much that sucked.

Worst was in high school when some girls knew i had a crush and so sent flowers to my crush with my name on it. They weren't my friends doing this.. this was to make fun of my crush. Or at least I thought. Looking back on it I don't really know their intentions. Maybe they thought it was cute and they were helping. I was just embarrassed so let him know it wasn't me who sent it. I'm not one for making a crush like me back even though I wanted them to like me back. I guess I was enjoying the pining and they ruined it for me. :P

I usually have a light hearted approach to VDay so it's been ok. I just want to sing "Cuuupid pull back your bowwwww.. and let your arrow flowwww.. straight through my lovers heart for meeeeee." and eat love heart candies. :) Vday brings out my shiny chicken the most. It's under aqua so the planets are in my 4th and sometimes there's a planet trining my moon and uranus.. I guess VDay is when I get the most annoying.

I spent all of my VDays alone before I met the hubs, and yup, I spent 'em watching other people get candy and flowers.  College was painful.  All day long, flowers were being delivered to the front desk at the dorm, and guys were taking their GFs out, while I was alone once again.  (I had college BFs, just never around VDay!)  Sucked miserably at the time, even though I can laugh about it now.

VDay always hit my sore spot, because the Aqua Sun forms a t square with my messy Saturn-Neptune 1st-7th opposition.

The VDay that "stung" the most, however, was the one when I thought I was still dating someone, and I found out through my friends that we were "just friends" (right after I said I wasn't sleeping with him 'cause we weren't dating long enough).  Here I was getting my hopes up for VDay, only to have them come crashing down (Sun square that nefarious 7th house Neptune), publicly no less...that was a trillion times worse than being alone.  (At least Mom & Dad bought me candy, which they did every year.  They still do!  Now it's me and the kids.  Always brought a little ray of sunshine to my gloom, wishing that the damn day was over already...)

I'd bought a pair of red suspenders for him, which I decided to keep and wear myself.

Those suspenders turned out to be one good thing I got out of the whole thing.  A few month later, I started dating the hubs, and he told me those red suspenders got his attention.  I was wearing them the day we met. 

I don't ever recall a "blissful" Valentine's Day, even when in love and I got the card and the whole bit.

Just seems a gaggy holiday - you can't even go out for dinner on that day and enjoy it.  The last time I went out on V' Day, there were gushy gaggy couples all over the place - reading poems out loud, another on bended knee asking for their hand in marriage -wanting the entire establishment to watch them and then yell and clap hands.  <Shudder, Shudder> This is so far from my idea of "romantic"!!  Just appears to be a bunch of posturing and performance for other people - who cares what they think??!!

Most of them have been awful. Special standouts:

(a) getting ditched by my date at the last minute because he got called in to work.

(b) getting dumped a day or two before VD

(c) the year my boss's husband sent a freaking barbershop quartet in to serenade her while we were on deadline.

(d) spending all night long on public transport (which was late, late, late), getting to the guy's house at around 10:30, and it was way too late to do much of anything. He gave me stuffed animals he won at his job. That's the most romantic VD I have had right there.

The best ones were when I was in grade school, or was at a conference and was so busy everyone forgot it was VD.

Aw! All these posts make we want to cry!

I would have to say that every VDay has been a bad VDay. Haha!

One year, I found out that the flowers I had sent him (I was in a different country and had sent him flowers from overseas), he turned around and gave them to his mistress. Ugh!

Another year, the guy did all the motions, took me out, but hardly said a word. It was like I was alone or something. It was horrible, and to end the night, I drove home sobbing because I knew he didn't love me anymore.

Another year, the guy told me he hated VDay, and the gifts that went along with it. Then he proceeded to get me a gift for VDay, and when I asked him why he did that, he said "because you were expecting one" and I said, no I wasn't, because you already told me you hate VDay, and now this gift doesn't even come from your heart.

Another year, I was living in my parents' home, and I came home late and they lectured me for an hour about coming home late. So anti-climactic.

Another year, I was supposed to spend the whole day with the guy, but then his tooth fell out that morning and he rushed to the dentist and didn't want to see me because of his missing tooth.

I think they were all equally bad!

I think that's enough for now!

The hands down winner came to me, as you might suspect, courtesy of ex-N. A few days before Valentine's we were talking, and he was asking if it was a big deal to me if we did anything on Valentine's Day. I forget what he said he was doing, working maybe. Anyhow, so I said it wasn't an especially huge deal to me and maybe we could do something the day after or whatever. A few days later a friend of mine took me aside and told me he'd seen ex-N out on the night, drinking and dancing with a girl that I had suspected he might be cheating with.

I never have really cared that much about making a fuss over the day, honestly, but that was egregious.

I spent 8 years with a man who never acknowledged it. Hard to remember what that felt like. I'm glad I'm not in that relationship anymore, no matter how much it hurt to have it end.

(((Everyone)))

It's funny how spending Valentine's Day alone could be the least of anyone's worries after realizing how much worse it could be.

I am lucky I have not had anything bad happen on V-Day. I've spent many alone but it didn't bother me much since I don't expect much on V-Day. I would be happy with a flower or a cupcake, a small, sweet gesture, but I wouldn't mind nothing happening at all. Most of them have been good. Birthdays, on the other hand, are my sore spot and have personal meaning. It's the anniversary and celebration of the first day of someone's existence. I have a moderate expectation, so tend to feel worse getting shafted on a b-day.

The SO, however, has had a terrible V-Day before. It's like he was down then got kicked while he was down. It was horrible. I don't want to share details for his privacy.

I treat Valentine's Day much like I treat New Year's or my birthday. (Though with astrology - I like the solar return aspect. And Leo/Jupiter does like the attention on that day.) I've been doing this long enough to, essentially, not have expectations around holidays. This can be awkward at times. Other people get quite excited and I've had to try to shift a bit so I don't down them if they are looking forward to something.

That being said, I'm going to a Valentine's event the Saturday after the day in question. I'm hoping to strike a good neutral balance and not piss on everyone's parade!! (Which I can do quite inadvertantly with my commentary at times.)

My ex husband only acknowledged V day when people were visiting whom he wanted to impress. I can't say I've ever had a "good" one. 

All I'm gonna say is that it's just not a good time of the year with my chart.  I think everytime I look, there's just not good aspects going for me at this time of year.  So it may explain why I have not gotten a present on valentine's day in this lifetime.  Yep, you read that right, not a one.  Oh, wait, my Dad did always give us candy filled hearts when we were little :).  Otherwise, from a s.o., nope.  No matter what I do, I can discuss it calmly, throw a fit (get mad) cry, pretend I don't care, etc, etc, etc.  None of it will matter, so I'm just gonna leave it at that, and wait to party on St. Patty's Day ;)
Angie