The Many Forms of Love: Celebrating Valentine’s Day Beyond Romance
Navigating Friendships, Boundaries, and Self-Love
Valentine’s Day is often seen as a celebration of romantic love, but as I’ve grown and evolved, I’ve come to realize that it’s just as much about self-love and the friendships that nourish our hearts. This weekend, while some will be indulging in romantic dinners, others will be raising a glass to Galentine’s Day—honoring the deep, meaningful connections with the people who have stood by them through life’s ups and downs.
The Evolution of Friendships
My journey with friendships has been shaped by therapy, self-reflection, and the necessary pauses I’ve had to take from relationships that no longer served me. It hasn’t always been easy, but one of the most important lessons I’ve learned is that friendships, like any other relationship, require effort, boundaries, and self-awareness. There have been times when I’ve needed to step back—not because I wanted to walk away forever, but because I needed space to reassess what I needed from the relationship and what I was willing to give.
Taking a break from a friendship doesn’t mean I don’t care. In fact, it often means the opposite—I care enough to want the relationship to be healthy and fulfilling rather than a source of stress and resentment. I’ve learned that when a friendship starts feeling more like a burden (stressful) than a source of joy, it’s a sign to check in with myself. Do I need to have an honest, perhaps difficult, conversation with this person? Or do I need to quietly step back and focus on my own well-being? The only thing I can truly control is my own actions, and sometimes, the best thing I can do for myself is to choose peace over prolonged discomfort.
Understanding Boundaries and the Dangers of Oversharing
One key takeaway I’ve learned in friendships is the importance of self-awareness when it comes to venting and sharing personal struggles. The key point of venting is to process emotions and situations, but if you’re venting primarily to seek validation, it can quickly turn into a toxic cycle that reinforces insecurities rather than resolving them.
Oversharing is often a sign of blurred boundaries. It can stem from an unconscious need to seek validation, especially when we are struggling with our self-worth. Instead of processing our emotions internally or with a trusted confidant, we sometimes share too much with friends who may not be equipped to provide healthy guidance. This can lead to an unhealthy dynamic where friendships revolve around negativity rather than growth.
A critical way for managing this is ensuring that the person you are confiding in is someone who can help shift your perspective and challenge your thoughts, rather than just fueling the problem. It’s easy to get caught up in toxic positivity within friend groups where everyone validates each other’s grievances without real accountability.
If you find yourself frequently sharing your struggles but not taking actionable steps to address them, it may be time to reflect on why you feel the need to share so much in the first place.
How to Combat the Urge to Overshare
If you find yourself constantly oversharing, here are a few tips that have helped me build healthier boundaries:
Pause Before Speaking – Before sharing something personal, ask yourself: Am I sharing this to process my emotions, or am I looking for external validation? If it’s the latter, try journaling or sitting with your thoughts first.
Identify Your Core Support System – Not every friend needs to know every detail about your life. Identify 1-2 people who provide thoughtful guidance and set a standard for meaningful conversations. Make sure that they have space for you! It is important that the information you are sharing will not overwhelm them.
Practice Self-Sufficiency – When something is bothering you, take time to reflect on it independently before bringing it to others. Try meditating, journaling, or engaging in self-care activities.
Develop Healthy Communication Habits – If you feel the need to vent, reframe it into a solution-oriented conversation. Instead of saying, "I don’t know what to do," try, "I’m feeling overwhelmed, and I want to explore my options for handling this."
Learn to Sit with Discomfort – Often, oversharing comes from a fear of sitting with difficult emotions alone. Practice self-soothing techniques, such as deep breathing or mindfulness, to build resilience.
When you become more aware of your boundaries and your thoughts, you begin to stop taking things so personally and start thinking objectively.
Realizing the Impact of Your Words
I used to treat information as a transaction—I vent about my partner because my friend vents about theirs. My friends started to build an unconscious bias of my partner
One day, my partner was really sad and told to me, “You know, whenever someone asks me about you, I never say anything bad about you because I respect you. I wish you would do the same and stand up for me.”
That was an eye-opener. Now, I don’t really talk about petty issues with friends because, at the end of the day, it’s not worth it. It’s not worth ruining our relationship over small things. It’s not worth telling these to my friends because I was just seeking validation that “I was right.” I stopped arguing with my partner over things like whose fault it was that we went the wrong way—at this point, it doesn’t matter. What matters is figuring out how to get to the next place together.
The Key to Strong Relationships
My friends in long-term relationships have always told me that the key to a lasting partnership isn’t about constantly feeling those romantic butterfly sensation, but about teamwork—when one person has a problem, you face it together. A true partnership means working together against the problem, not against each other.
This became even clearer to me during a discussion with some friends about relationships:
“My friends in relationships that always bicker a lot—I feel like, at the end of the day, they don’t respect each other or they feel the relationship is not equal. The smallest things (like not washing dishes) will tick them off and lead to fights.”
Hearing this, I realized how often small frustrations escalate when there’s an imbalance in expectations. The real issue isn’t just the surface-level problem—it’s the lack of communication and alignment. When expectations are unclear, it creates room for resentment and unnecessary power struggles.
Successful relationships, whether romantic or platonic, thrive on open dialogue, setting aside egos, have mutual respect, and the ability to approach challenges as a team. The more we focus on understanding each other rather than assigning blame, the stronger and more fulfilling our connections become.
So, this Valentine’s weekend, whether you’re celebrating love with a partner, your closest friends, or simply yourself, take a moment to honor the relationships that truly matter. Prioritize the relationships that bring peace rather than stress, engage in conversations that foster growth rather than self-doubt, and most importantly, extend kindness and love to yourself.
What are some ways you’ve learned to set boundaries and cultivate healthier relationships? Let’s continue the conversation in the comments! 💌