DEAR ERIC: Valentine’s Day is approaching and members of my family and friends send me “Happy Valentine’s Day” texts, knowing that I am a widow. They claim that Valentine’s is for everybody, not just couples. I feel otherwise and this just rubs salt into my wounds. These wishes feel to me very thoughtless and insensitive. How do I respond?

Dear Stuck: There’s just no pleasing some people. Especially when their worldview is perpetually tinted grey, and an unappealing shade of grey at that. There are solutions available to your mother, if she wants to make use of them. But right now, she doesn’t seem inclined to change and it’s not your job to make her.

Then there was Geoffrey Chaucer, who wrote in his medieval poem “Parliament of Fowl” that English birds mated on Valentine’s Day—“For this was on the seynt Valentynes Day, Whan every foul cometh there to chese his makes”—making every 14th-century couple start whispering sweet nothings to each other before dying of the bubonic plague or whatever.

If there are some who have repeatedly sent texts or made a point to contradict you about your own feelings, proactively asking before Valentine’s Day that they not send a message may help. Now, it may also draw you into a debate.

Valentine’s Day is approaching and members of my family and friends send me “Happy Valentine’s Day” texts, knowing that I am a widow. They claim that Valentines

"Valentine’s Day is approaching and members of my family and friends send me 'Happy Valentine’s Day' texts, knowing that I am a widow."