Ready, set... Valentine's Day compersion check-in!

Hi polyfriends! With perhaps the BIGGEST holiday dedicated to couple-dom just around the corner, and a plethora of Valentine's advertising, merchandise and internets-hype telling us we should be reveling in the L-word with our Special Significant Other, I wanted to do a little check-in to find out how my friends in poly-land are coping with the mixed signals Valentine's Day brings.

Some of the feelings V-Day brings up for me are decidedly mixed, including:

- desire
- loneliness
- anxiety
- greed (for chocolate and/or sex and/or cuddles)
- compersion (hey, I *am* poly, after all)
- gratitude
- confusion
- guilt
- shame
- irony

Additionally, for those of us dating or relating to more than one special person, V-Day can be a scheduling nightmare.

This year, like the last few years, I am living alone and I anticipate V-Day will be a quiet affair. I will work, send some texts to my sweeties, and treat myself to a bubbly bath and some chocolate.

What are your V-Day poly plans? Will you spend it with a partner, or several of them? Will your partners be spending it with their other partners? Will you be sitting at home wondering why it feels twice as bad to be single AND poly on Valentine's Day? Will you ignore the whole thing on the grounds that it's a commercially-driven ploy designed to prey upon our need for love in order to sell merchandise and promote a heteronormative, couple-oriented agenda?

While I'm inclined to play down the romance and play up the compersion and caring, I, for one, will not object if you send me chocolate. ;)

~K