We know how they suffer. We've been there, are there, or will be there again, soon. But is that any reason to turn Valentine's Day into veritable chamber of happy horrors, replete with images of couples so cheerful they exceed even that glorious 15-minute period in most relationships when it seems like everything is going to work out?

Saudi Arabia has a lot of problems. But you start to understand why certain austere, conservative brands of Islamic believers hate Western culture when you look at this:

"Oh... Ronald. Thank you for the Sony DVD player. You may fuck me now! Happy Valentine's Day!"

Ugh. Wahhabism, anybody?

And so American singles, deluged with countless mirrors of their own loneliness and isolation, and besieged by endless, airbrushed models of unattainable happiness, fall into a predictable mid-February funk. What better time than the middle of the coldest, shortest, meanest month to celebrate your own miserable solitude?

But that's old news. Valentine's Day has another, even more damaging edge to its blade of misery. It drips more venom, and it needs to: This is the blade that damages and destroys otherwise sustainable relationships.

For Valentine's Day presents established couples with a foul challenge. Faced with a funhouse of impossibly high expectations, the day isn't just an invitation to treat your loved one to something special: It's an order. It's a chance to compare what you've got to the what you would like to have... and agonize over the difference.

And like birthdays and anniversaries, the day is a wonderful way to stress out couples with differing philosophies about the sentimental observation of the passage of time. But unlike birthdays and anniversaries, there's nothing inherently personally special about V-Day that ties it to the couple in question. It's just a day on a calendar.

So, you overcompensate, spending $20 for mediocre chocolates, $50 for earrings that might get worn once or twice, $100 for dinner at a crowded place where the unpronounceable entrees are considerably less satisfying than what you'd get at that Chinese place you always like to go when you're not "celebrating" anything in particular.

Dress up, stress out, feed your face, and survive as a couple — or not.

And so, when you look at the mass of self-loathing singles, the couples stressed out or tragically indifferent, the evenings meant to be special that were contrived, strained, and underwhelming, you come to a simple conclusion: Valentine's Day doesn't care. For every beautiful, loveswept evening it hands down to the public, a dozen people are left in tears.

We can't attack it with Molotov cocktails and we can't sate it with tears. It's a mental monster.

Thank God for friends.

James Norton can be reached at jim@flakmag.com.