In Parks & Recreation, friendship queen Leslie Knope throws a Galentine’s Day lunch for all her girlfriends on February 13.
“Every February 13, my ladyfriends and I leave our husbands and our boyfriends at home, and we just come and kick it, breakfast-style,” she explains in the episode. “Ladies celebrating ladies. It’s like Lilith Fair, minus the angst. Plus frittatas.”
This has actually turned into a thing now – enough women celebrate Galentines (or Palentines if you’ve got a mixed group), that companies are starting to cash in on it with merch the same way they do with Feb 14.
If you think about it, the Galentines thing is even maybe a tiny bit patronising – as though the pre-Valentine frittatas are supposed to sustain any single people in the group through the following 24 hours of watching other people get flowers, share milkshakes and ride tandem bikes through the streets.
But of course, there’s never a bad time to celebrate your friends, whether it’s your lady friends, or non-lady friends, or all of them at once.
So why not do it on Valentine’s Day itself?
Yes, even if you have a partner.
Gather anyone in your crew who wants to hang out, whether that includes your ~lover~ or not, and do something together. Colonise the couple-y pasta-making classes and dimly lit restaurants, and soundtrack those dates with your raucous laughter. Book out some of those luxe cinema seats for a movie with more explosions than kissing (or just go for a romcom if you’re all cool and into that).
Go axe-throwing. Smash some delicious wines at the local. Race shopping trolleys in the Coles carpark. Do whatever you normally do together, or something extra special – just do it together.
Obviously there might be some couples in your circle of friends who do keep Valentine’s Day special – and you can’t blame them for buying into the candy-heart industrial complex. (You can often spot them using the terms “husby” and “wifey” on Instagram posts, bless their basic little hearts.)
People love to talk about how you have to put work into long-term romantic relationships, with date nights and scheduled sex dates and other forms of deliberate, dedicated, kinda of unsexy maintenance. But are you putting that same work into your close friendships? (Especially the ones who have seen you through a few breakups now.)
Spending a day (or night) that’s all about couples to demonstrating the love you have for your friends tells them that they’re important and loved too.
It’s also a great way to show them that even though you do have a boyfriend/gal pal/special schmoopy bear, you still want to hang out with your single mates, and not just as a backup when your partner’s got other plans – or as a V-day pity party.
