This year Valentine’s Day may turn out to be a bust. Despite its ancient roots, the holiday was long ago co-opted by commercial businesses to sell products. Yet it continued to thrive until recently, at least from a financial point of view. In 2020, the average American spent close to $200 on Valentine’s Day. That is unlikely to be the case this year, for two reasons: lack of funds and lack of partners.

First, the money. No one has any to spend this year. Due to a combination of inflation and shrinkflation, the cost of a restaurant meal has more than doubled since 2020. Flowers, chocolate, and clothing prices have increased by over 40%. On top of that, energy prices have risen into the stratosphere, while taxes at every level continue to multiply. The American middle class has nearly disappeared. Our nation is on the verge of becoming one of only rich and poor.

The one Valentine’s Day exception to the crushing cost of celebrating is the price of diamonds. That has fallen by 20% in the last year alone. Much of that is attributed to Generation Z’s lack of interest in diamonds—Gen Zers simply aren’t buying them. Another factor, though, is the explosion in sales of synthetic diamonds. Equivalent in chemical structure to mined diamonds, the cost to produce them has plummeted over the past 10 years. They now sell for far less than natural diamonds—over 80% less, carat per carat—yet are considered by international gem societies as equivalent to the old-fashioned gems. All that differentiates them from diamonds taken from the earth is their provenance.

The second reason Valentine’s Day has become a bust is the disappearance of committed relationships. I know this from my clinical practice: Nearly half my patients are alone. This mirrors the general population, where close to 40% of American women report being single. Worse, many have stopped looking for partners. Like a growing number of the unemployed, they have simply removed themselves from the dating market, choosing chronic singledom over dating and marriage.

Here are two recent article titles from Evie Magazine, the “Cosmo for the Gen Z Conservative Woman,” with a circulation of nearly two million:

  • Young Americans are so miserable dating they’re taking themselves off the market. Why?
  • The real reasons you can’t find a relationship and how to fix it.

That doesn’t sound good.

What these articles, and many others, focus on is the disappearance of traditional dating, with its structure, formality, rules, and expectations. Young people today have no guideposts, are left rudderless and utterly confused, and no longer want to participate in dating at all.

Relationships have been replaced with “situationships,” where two people find themselves coupled in nebulous ways that don’t lead to anything.

Like much of the rest of their lives, these individuals’ dating lives lack direction and purpose. Dating, therefore, is not an inspiring activity to pursue.

This collapse of traditional dating doesn’t only affect the young. I have heard from many women in the 40s, 50, and 60s who have recently been divorced or widowed that their new relationships are now short, unfulfilling, and disappointing. One recently told me the men she meets now treat relationships as “disposable” and quickly discarded when the slightest difficulty or discomfort arises. Worse than a lack of commitment, what these men show is a lack of desire for a relationship at all.

Women are equally to blame for this debacle of lost love. American women in particular now demand to be treated the same as men…except when they want to be treated as women. They make it impossible for a traditional man who values sex role differentiation to succeed in building a relationship with them. The contemporary woman of course remains identical to all women who came before her, biologically, with the same emotional and physical needs, despite the mental brainwash by the modern feminist movement.

As they continue to be victimized by the dilution of masculinity in the American male, women also victimize themselves by doing nothing to correct the problem.

It's a sad, awkward dance, really. Lonely hearts across America—male and female—without partners, suffering on Valentine’s Day. As Americans, we can certainly do without the marketing and commercialization. What we can’t do without, though, is healthy companionship.