5 Valentine's Day Horror Stories That'll Make You Cringe Hard

If you’re less than happy about being perennially single this Valentine’s Day, just think, it could be a whole lot worse – you could have just been dumped, spent the whole day having a raging argument, or walked in the freezing cold to your other half’s house wearing nothing but a coat and lacy underwear, only to find he’s playing computer games with a bunch of mates.

Sometimes a day that’s all about love and lust simply piles on the pressure, and while the payoff from a lovely date can be roses, romance and amazing sex, when things go wrong those moments get ingrained in the brain. Forever.

Here are some people who know exactly how quickly a Valentine’s date can turn sour...

Dumped The Day Before.

One man, who wishes to remain anonymous (for obvious reasons), tells HuffPost UK he was walking down the street holding a bunch of incredibly expensive roses to give his girlfriend on their early Valentine’s date, when she phoned him and dumped him. There and then. It was 13 February.

“I think my response was ‘well, this is incredibly awkward’,” he says. The pair had been together for roughly six months. But, in hindsight, the fact she was already arranged to go for dinner on the 14 with one of her best friends might have been a bit of a giveaway that a break-up was on the horizon. Ouch.

The Argumentative Date.

Allie says she spent a large portion of her Valentine’s date crying in the toilet of a Moroccan restaurant, because she’d been arguing with her boyfriend non-stop all day. They then awkwardly sat through a three-course meal (yes, they were one of those pairings) in a small room filled with loved-up couples .

“They’d decided to cram all the couples into one room, rather than spread us out across the two rooms, and it was incredibly cramped and awkward,” she says. “Especially given both of us were in such a bad mood. We ended up just gobbling the food down in silence and then had an [another] argument when we got home.” Surprisingly, the pair split up not long after.

Cheater’s Gonna Cheat.

“My boyfriend cheated on me just over a month before Valentine’s Day but we decided to give it another go,” says one unhappy Valentine, who we’ll call Angela (not her real name).

The pair agreed they’d make an effort for Valentine’s Day, despite the fact they’d be spending 14 February apart. So Angela made a box full of his favourite things, including chocolate, coffee, a framed photo and a watch he’d really wanted. “It cost a lot to send this Valentine’s box down to him but I wanted to make the effort, like he said we should,” she recalls.

And in return? Three days before Valentine’s, Angela arrived home to find a box had been left outside her flat containing flowers that were half dead. “That was all he did. He couldn’t even get them delivered on the actual day,” she says. “I was so embarrassed, I didn’t tell him I received them. And on Valentine’s Day when he received my box and obviously felt guilty, he said: ‘You could’ve told me you were going to go to that much effort, now mine looks shit.’ Dick.”

Mad About The Ex.

Valentine’s haunts Jessi to this day, after a card she received made her revisit some powerful emotions about her ex. “I was 17, living at home and working as a waitress,” she recalls. So far, so Human League. “During my shift, my mum texted me with news that a card had arrived addressed to ‘Jessica’. Very few people in this world call me by that and my heart raced thinking my dreams had come true and my recent ex had changed his mind and declared his love for me on this romantic day.”

After hours of letting her mind run wild, thinking up possible scenarios (all of which involved her ex), she clocked off from her shift and went home, where she hastily tore open the envelope. “It read ‘Fuck Valentine’s Day’ in big letters,” she continues. “I felt sick. Until I read the fine print – ‘you’re single and fabulous’. My best friend had thoughtfully sent me a card so I could feel the love but ultimately that resulted in three hours of crying and a major backtrack on the progress I’d made in getting over the ex.” Everybody now: “Don’t you want me, baby?...”

Undy-niable Embarrassment.

It could’ve been worse though... One reader who wished to remain anonymous – also for good reason – revealed that her Valentine’s Day once went sour after a friend convinced her to turn up at her boyfriend’s house wearing sexy lingerie, a coat and nothing else.

“The only way to get to his place was a 30-minute walk,” she explains. “Ten minutes in, my stockings are falling down, my lacy bra is chafing and I’m totally frozen. Unable to stand the strange looks from passers-by as I hoicked up my stocking yet again, I eventually rang my friend to come and give me a lift.”

But when she got to her boyfriend’s place, the mood had gone – and continued to plummet through the floorboards into the dark, cold earth. “When I got there, my boyfriend was too busy playing ‘Football Manager’ to pay me any attention so I ended up sitting on his bed in my coat for what felt like hours before he realised what was going on. I was not feeling romantic by that point.”