"Galentine's Day gives friendship the recognition it deserves"

Galentine’s Day is often presented as the anti-Valentine’s Day. At worst, it's seen as a bitter rebuttal for single women against the celebration of loved up couples. At best, a clapback against the commercialisation of a single day every February. In my view, however, the event (which falls on 13 February, the day before Valentine’s) is one of the only occasions dedicated to celebrating the monumentally influential, often longest-lasting relationships in our lives – friendship.

Galentine’s Day is a relatively new holiday, popularised in 2010 via an episode of Amy Poehler’s Parks and Recreation. While the officially titled occasion may have come around more recently, the concept of spending Valentine’s Day with friends is nothing new. What an official Galentine’s Day does offer, however, is the space to celebrate friendship as well as, rather than instead of, romantic partners. In my opinion, it elevates friendship to an equal pedestal to romantic connections and reminds us these relationships deserve to be just as cherished.

(Left) Bethan at an event for her 29th birthday with friends from three different stages of her life. (Right) At a joint birthday, engagement and wedding celebration with school friends Freya, Emily and Jess last year.

Friendship influences so much of our lives, from school days right through to old age. Friends may know you years before a romantic partner and, often, long afterwards too. They might have been there since your teens, before you had children, or be a friend from the school gates who became a life raft during that changing phase of your life. They could have begun as a work colleague but later became your closest confidant. The beauty of friends from different eras is that range of perspectives – between them all, they know the whole you in a way that a single partner is rarely able to. And yet, the power and significance friendship that holds is so often overlooked, placed on a tier below family and romantic love. That's why I’ve always made an effort to prioritise celebrating life’s milestones with friends, as well as with partners, beyond Galentine’s Day.

I live with a few minutes' walk to five of my closest friends, as we gradually gravitated to the same London borough and formed a community. Of course, we celebrate birthdays and engagements and the like, but we champion the other significant moments in each other’s lives, too. There was the personal cheer squad who came out to support me when I ran a solo marathon last September. The ‘rangoli’ patterns we painted on my doorstep for Diwali with a friend spending the festival away from her family in India, and the dinner to mark Kosovo Independence Day with another.

(Left) Enjoying Valentine’s Day in 2022 with friends Eliza, Harry and Kavya. (Right) Bethan spent Valentine’s Day in 2018 at a Cardiff cinema with friends Sarah and Natalia.

Each year, I host an annual pre-Christmas dinner for our university group. What began as a cobbled together roast dinner in student halls, has grown into a yearly occasion of up to 16 people, now also attended by the various partners and children of the original members. Even those who don’t otherwise celebrate Christmas have made it a staple of their December diary, as a day to come together as friends. And who said anniversaries are only for couples? This summer, I’ve booked a week’s holiday with a group of 10 to mark a decade since our friendship began.

It's perhaps no wonder then, that both Galentine’s Day and even Valentine’s Day I have mostly marked with friends. Far from usurping previous partners, the decision has been an excuse to celebrate love in its many forms, rather than solely for romantic reasons. Of course, I’ve done the romantic celebrations too - complete with gifts of designer shoes or a surprise weekend away - but it was the Valentine’s Day I spent at a run-down Carfiff cinema in 2018 that stands out most for me. There were three of us spending the day either single or away from our partners, so we booked tickets to the latest 50 Shades of Grey film. We sat shoulder-to-shoulder between teenage couples, drinking wine and hunching over in stifled laughter at the film’s questionable plotline. It was an evening of such genuine connection and uncomplicated joy that I find it hard to believe even the shiniest pair of shoes could ever compare.

As Galentine’s Day this year coincides with Shrove Tuesday, I’ll be having pancakes and prosecco with five of my friends, surrounded by tacky heart-shaped banners and confetti-filled balloons (which will inevitably ruin my carpet). And I couldn’t be happier. For me, both of this week’s celebrations are simply about love, without restrictions on the form it comes in or who we choose to spend either occasion with.