Valentine’s Day is tomorrow. On this occasion, people will be pledging their love to their husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends and others with cards, candy and flowers. However, some people will not get a valentine this year. They feel like Lucy Moderatz in the movie “While You Were Sleeping.” Life seems to be passing them by. They wonder if they will ever find true happiness with a significant other. They also must wonder why it hasn’t happened to them yet and how long, if ever, before it does? Tick Tock.

Often, the seeds of loneliness and even self-loathing in extreme circumstances are sown in childhood. Developmental psychologist Erik Erickson touches on this in his crises such as “trust vs mistrust’ and “identify vs role confusion.” How we progress (or not) in our pyschosocial development is subtly broadcast to others around us. Peer groups then reflect back positively on us or they reinforce what otherwise might be unfounded suspicions and notions we have about ourselves.

Bullying is a good place to start

Again, there are many people who feel unloved and unwanted, unappreciated. They don’t feel love. Perhaps they don’t even love themselves. We read of children as young as twelve who take their lives because they don’t feel loved by their peers, or as a consequence of bullying. Very few of us could tolerate harsh invectives from the people around us for very long. True, children can be cruel, but some cultures to this day shun members of their society when they break the norms.

Consequences of an unhappy childhood linger. I knew an adult years ago who was thirty-something and who was rejected by his mother because she hated the man she was married to. This man came home drunk one night and raped her. She called her son her “bastard.” Even as an adult. He felt “orphaned” in some way through no fault of his own.

Some people are unloved because they are different. Some sort of physical challenge or intellectual deficit that attracts the attention of boys and girls who make themselves feel superior at the expence of the challenged student. I lived on a farm growing up and we had about 900 chickens on any given occasion. Every once in a while, a chicken was rejected by others in the coop and was pecked to death. This is what Tocqueville in an instance of hyperbole would call the “tyranny of the majority.” Today, people still mock others because of their handicap, or ethicity, or even because of their name. I noticed that one teenager who was driven to suicide during the past three years did so because she was harrassed over her COVID vaccine status. Others are likewise ostracized.

There are online resources for parents and their children to deal with bullying. It needs to stop.

Perhaps your self-esteem plays a role in your feelings. A well-adjusted person loves and is loved, but then they also love and respect themselves. Again, this requires a healthy ability for the person to evaluate themself. If you don’t love or respect yourself, you might unconciously send out certain “vibes” in the form of nonverbal communication that others will pick up on.

Be realistic

An essay on “Exploring Your Mind” cautions us to not set unrealistic expectations about love:

“If you idealize love too much, you could come to the conclusion that nobody really loves you, because they’re not willing to give their lives for you. Or because they eventually fail you and they’re not there when you need them.

Those who love out of emotional deprivation demand more love than people can give. And because their expectations are so high and they are not met, they may end up constantly disappointed.

There may be times when you feel that nobody really loves you because, simply, you cannot build genuine bonds of affection with others.”

https://exploringyourmind.com/that-feeling-that-nobody-really-loves-you/

You have to be willing to put into a relationship at least as much as you take from it. People who are needy, insecure and demanding make it difficult for a friend or significant other to maintain a sense of equilibrium. Friendship, like love, is a two-way street.

We can all help

It doesn’t take much to make a difference in other people’s lives. I was teaching one semester in a high school and there was a student who had special needs, who ran errands for the principal’s assistant. She could and eagerly did simple tasks to feel meaningful and relevant to some limited degree. Over the course of the semester, I watched the interaction between her and the other students her age, and there really was no interaction. The typical students just ignored her or “saw through her” as if she were not there. But she seemed to be helpful and conscientious in her own limited way. I asked the assistant about her and she told me her name and warned me that if I ever acknowledged the student and (“worse”) if I ever addressed her by her name, I would make a friend for life. I could not resist. I was in the office one day and she walked in and I said “Good morning Mindy! How are you today?” In the next moments, it was if the heavens had opened and a chorus of angels sang. Once the flash of being startled left her face, she had the most appreciative look I’ve ever seen. It was clear I had made her day and it didn’t cost a dime to boost her self-esteem. I’ve always loved stories of some CEO of a Fortune 500 company who knows the names of the housekeeping staff in his building and takes time to chat with them. The problem is, there are not that many stories like this.

In my core, my old nature is not whole lot different then anyone else’s. But I have a new nature as well and if I use it for good (or use it at all,) I can make a difference, even as the person in the famous starfish story did. So, this Valentine’s Day, why not smile or greet someone you’ve never spoken to before. Who knows how that might end?