Valentine Blues as a Single Lady and Foreigner in Russia

February 15, 2026
No Comments

It is February 14th in St. Petersburg and my city has transformed into a literal ice box. Another Valentine’s day without anything special has come and gone. I just saw a young man clutching bouquets of roses wrapped in three defensive layers of plastic, and we all know that if those petals touch the -25°C air for more than a second, they’ll wilt fast. Lol, it’s moments like these that make me wonder what the hype around Valentine’s is, or maybe I’m just a hater today.

At 28, I am officially a medical doctor both abroad and partly at home; I say partly because I could not complete my housemanship in Nigeria (story for another time). I can diagnose a cardiac murmur in two languages and navigate the Russian medical bureaucracy, but I haven’t quite cracked the code on my own “heart situation”. For the 28th year in a row, nobody is sending beautiful gifts my way or texting me about some surprise package. No cards, no secret admirers, just a notification from the weather app that next week might be even colder.

As a foreign woman who spent her entire 20s buried in anatomy textbooks and never really found the ‘one’, days like these truthfully leave me feeling slightly down. I guess when love is in the air and you’re not breathing it, you are painfully aware. In med school, I was never bothered. Studying medicine was hard in itself, and studying in Russian was even harder, and that kept me busy. However, since graduation, it has started to dawn on me that there’s no imaginary love anywhere and the thought that love would automatically come my way after school was a joke.

I cannot even fail to mention the heightened pressure I feel from my family members during this season. My younger self used to think that stories I heard from people on marriage talks and the pressure they were experiencing were exaggerated and that family members cannot be so straightforward and brash when talking about marriage.

Hmm, my eyes have seen pepper and these past years have taught me otherwise. A typical marriage talk with my mum goes like this: “Adura, your cousin just announced she’s pregnant with her second. Do you want to come home? Ehn, I know coming home is not an option for you but at least start talking to someone. We found a nice engineer here. He’s stable. He has a house. He’s waiting o.”

With every fiber in me, I know one of those calls will come in this love-love period.

There’s a specific kind of fear that hits around 6:00 PM on a day like Valentine’s. It’s the quiet worry that I might be “too much” for some and “too late” for others. A nagging thought that I’ve traded my “prime” years for a degree in a country where I am, and likely always will be, a guest.

But as I walk out of the clinic, I stop at my favorite perkarnya (bakery shop). I caution myself not to think I am a “late” bride or a woman who has “missed the boat.” Frankly, I see a woman who moved to one of the most complex, beautiful, and frozen countries on earth. I see someone who mastered a language that sounds like a secret code and earned the title of “Doctor” through sheer, stubborn will. My family is worried I’m missing the boat, but they don’t realize I’m currently busy steering one.

I buy myself a massive, moist slice of carrot cake and a single, ridiculous, overpriced rose flower. If the odds of finding a husband here are slim, I’ll just have to settle to making myself happy on a day when being single feels like a punishment. I encourage myself that I love the life I have built (sincerely, I swear I do) and eventually, love will come.

To all my fellow single pringles, or if you’re celebrating with a partner, remember that your worth isn’t defined by a bouquet of roses or gifts that someone got or didn’t get for you. You’ve built a life in a land of ice and fire and that in itself speaks volumes.

I know this is not a typical Valentine’s write-up, but in case there’s anyone feeling this way, we see you and we feel you.

E-Solutions is committed to the African community in Russia. Message us on WhatsApp if you are not yet seeing our updates.

If you want to get help on the latest apartment spaces, job listings, and sending packages to and from Russia, you can join our Telegram community for Africans living in Russia.