Hello and welcome to or welcome back to Try Not to Care. If you're new here, my name's Ashley. I upload every single Monday. We do some good old

girl chat. I give you some big sister advice. We talk mental health, navigating life, relationships, you name it.

And with this month being the month of love, I just want each episode to focus on navigating

relationships, whether it's with yourself or with a partner, with friends, or whatever,

you know, it's the month of love. Last episode, I talked about building a relationship with

yourself, how to flirt with yourself, how to bring back

confidence and playfulness with yourself. Today, I just want to do a full dedicated episode to

spending Valentine's Day alone. Holidays in general can be really hard to get through when you're

single or you're going through a breakup or you're in a relationship that's just not serving you.

Up until I started dating my now fiancé Josh, I obviously had other relationships and I was

in these relationships during Valentine's Day. But even though I was, you know, dating someone,

it was almost harder to celebrate Valentine's Day because I was in those relationships.

I think people think that just because you have a boyfriend or a girlfriend that you love Valentine's Day and it's so

romantic and you feel so loved and so appreciated.

But when you're in a toxic relationship or you're with someone who just does not love you

the way that you deserve to be loved, it can be just as lonely, if not more lonely than being

single on Valentine's Day. In past relationships, I had the lowest of the low for expectations.

The bar was in hell. And these guys still couldn't meet

those expectations. They would act like me wanting flowers on Valentine's Day or me wanting

them to take me out to dinner or me wanting a Valentine's Day card was asking for too much.

They'd flip it around and act as if I was too materialistic and I don't love them. I love gifts and I always need more and it's

like I literally just wanted flowers. They would purposefully make it into this big thing that we would

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