What Being Single During the Holidays Feels Like

The holidays can be terrible for any number of reasons: namely annoying relatives, copious amounts of spending on gifts that no one actually needs, and couples. Across the board, the collective pressures of both capitalism and your nosy aunts have an incredible knack for reminding you just how much it can suck to be single during the holidays, as demonstrated in a new video from BuzzFeed. As if being accosted by coy Christmas carols at every imaginable turn weren’t enough, there are the ceaseless blandishments for diamond proposals (don’t do it), and pressures from your prying family to add to the mix.

Christmas is spent pouring heavy on the wine while sidestepping awkward questions from in-laws with whom you haven’t had an earnest conversation since adolescence. But as the painfully awkward dialogue about your love life takes center stage in a room full of adults with no barometer for uncomfortable topic matter, your status as sad solo person is amplified by a flood of misplaced compliments.

BuzzFeed’s (markedly) patient protagonist greets demoralizing comments with the “Yeah…” reserved only for situations with which you neither agree with nor wish to be in. “So there’s like no one?” insists one well-meaning friend, “Because I just refuse to believe that.” Well, there’s not. “We’re going ice skating next week. You should come!” commands another partnered acquaintance. “It’s couples skating...but I’ll skate with you!” Only if I can use a skate blade to willingly gouge my own eyes out!

Watch the BuzzFeed’s video below. And remember: we’re in this together.

Image: BuzzFeed/YouTube