As Valentine’s Day approaches, the stress of wanting to be in a relationship can cause single people to misinterpret the actions of the opposite sex. The cashier at the grocery store may have brushed your hand when she gave you your change, but you shouldn’t have asked her to marry you without at least going on a date first. The bus driver told you to get behind the yellow line because he wanted you to get behind the yellow line, and not because he wanted to elope with you.
Even people in a committed relationship can feel the stress on Valentine’s Day. Forgetful men have to rush out of the house at 4 a.m. to scour the stores for an unopened box of chocolates, wives feel obligated to spend a romantic evening with their husband even though he ate the equivalent of 16 cloves of garlic with his dinner, and college students have to outspend the boyfriends of their girlfriends’ roommates so they don’t look bad by comparison.
For men in particular, Valentine’s Day can be a baffling ordeal. All the pink and red hearts everywhere, candy and flowers, and a potentially demanding wife or girlfriend. Well, the time for worrying is over. Here are some tips on having a successful Valentine’s Day, whether the highlight of your evening will be a candlelit dinner or a bucket of popcorn and inane reality shows.
First let’s deal with those of you who are, how shall I put this delicately, adrift in a black hole of crushing loneliness and despair. Cheer up! There’s no better time of year to find that special someone. Remember that however desperate you may be, there’s someone else out there at least as hopeless as you are. Valentine’s Day is the time of year when people lower their standards the most in the hope of attracting any romantic attention.
Start by looking in the places you frequent the most. Not only are you likely to find someone with similar interests that way, but it requires the least amount of effort. For example, if you grocery shop at a store that only sells organic food, you automatically share something in common with anyone you meet there. Plus, instead of buying her flowers (“Don’t kill any plants for me!”) you can just recycle some of the poetry you wrote as a 14-year-old, with such unforgettable lines as “You make me want to fly/And soar across the sky.” If all else fails, you can hang out at the bus stop hoping to meet people, but this method usually entails more humiliation than most of us are comfortable with, since a lot of women who use public transportation carry pepper spray.
If this method works, you are in for a treat, because the low expectations by which you snagged your sweetie also keep her from getting her hopes up too high regarding Valentine’s Day activities. Usually a heart-shaped pizza and a Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan movie are sufficient.
Now for those who are in a relationship. Buckle up, because your commitment is about to be tested as never before, particularly if you’re a man. If this is your first Valentine’s Day spent together, you have a particularly difficult dilemma to resolve. On the one hand you don’t want to look cheap or insufficiently thoughtful (conversation hearts are only appropriate Valentine’s gifts in elementary school). On the other hand, if you do too much, each ensuing year will find you struggling to top the previous year, until you’re selling organs on the black market to pay for ten thousand roses and a private jet ride to
The key here, particularly in a marriage, is consistency. By establishing Valentine’s Day traditions, you appear thoughtful enough by remembering to do something every year without ending up in a competition with yourself (“If only I could travel in time back to last year and stop myself from hiring Michael Bolton to compose and sing a song just for her!”). You get bonus points for using the word “tradition,” as it automatically imbues the event with a sense of nostalgia and deep meaning. I suggest dinner out at a decent-but-not-too-expensive restaurant and a nice card. That’s a standard you can maintain every year without requiring illegal activities to procure funding.
As you can see, Valentine’s Day can be a testament to the love you share with your sweetheart, or it can mark the beginning of an irreversible downward spiral in your relationship. The choice is yours.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go invent a time machine. Michael Bolton? What was I thinking?!
