What Men Think About Valentine's Day

The average guy doesn't like Valentine's day. Aside from the obvious fact that the holiday is driven by marketing hype much more than by the honest needs of relationships, men dislike Valentine's day because it places pressure on them to express their feelings in unnatural and effeminate ways, and often to a degree they feel unprepared for.

On Valentines's day, men are expected to show their undying love for their woman by following a script prescribed by Hallmark or Flowers.com, and promoted by Hollywood: flowers, fine dining, exuberant cards, rose petals, teddy bears, etc. If a man doesn't follow this script, he suffers the consequence of disrupting the relationship. But if he does follow it, he feels like an emasculated pushover, forced by social pressures into expressing feelings that he may or may not have in ways that would never have occurred to him naturally. Either way, he loses.

Not every man understands his own distaste for the holiday. Maybe a man's aversion to Valentine's day is manifested as nothing other than a small feeling of annoyance in the back of his mind as he tries to pick the least-gay card off the shelf in CVS (from among thousands of cards designed for women, by women). But this annoyance is rooted in the fact that he feels forced into expressing himself in unmanly ways.

A man demonstrates his love for you regularly in ways that aren't as ostentatious as a large bouquet of roses, but run deeper for their lack of overt exhibition: he commits to you willingly, he suppresses his desire to be with other women, he avoids reminding you of that desire, he attends to your emotional needs without complaint, he holds you and protects you, etc.

In addition, men are skeptical of Valentine's day because they know it is (at least partially) motivated by a woman's need to demonstrate to her friends how much she is loved - sometimes more so than it is motivated by a true need for the visible symbols of that love. Again, while most men might not recognize this consciously, it is implicit in their thought that the Valentine's day traditions seem overdone and excessive - because they are excessive if all that drives them is the woman's need for visible expressions of love.

I am not saying that no man likes to express his love through a card or flowers, or that men don't enjoy romantic dates. Some probably do. And I am not saying that there is no need for visible signs of affection in relationships, because there is. They have a time and a place (especially if the man and woman both express their love through gifts). What I am saying is that when a man doesn't get to choose that time and place, and when his hand is forced by the social pressures of a vacuous holiday, his masculine decisiveness and authority are called into question, and he resents it.

So this year I suggest you do three things to help your man through the awkwardness of Valentine's Day:

1. De-emphasize Valentine's Day by dismissing it openly to him as a marketing ploy. Say something like "Valentine's Day is such a farce; if there weren't decorations in the grocery store and commercials on TV, no one would even remember it after five years. It's purely driven by marketing." (Do not tell him not to get you anything, as this might give him the idea that you don't like receiving gifts.)
2. Get him something small. The biggest pressure on Valentine's Day comes from the "culture" within the relationship to make a big deal out of it. By only getting him something small (like a card or dressing up in lingerie), you take a lot of the pressure off him the next year.
3. Curb whatever desire you have to show off on Valentine's Day. Aside from fact that your single female coworkers will probably murder you when you receive roses and a huge teddy bear at the office, recognize that a truly confident woman who is secure in her relationship doesn't need the external affirmation of her peers' jealousy.
4. Recognize the existing expressions of his love for you, as described above. This will help you to realize that you don't need chocolates on some arbitrary day in February. (If there aren't any common expressions of love in your relationship, you probably shouldn't be together.)

Before you complain that taking the pressure off a man on Valentine's Day makes it "too easy for him," consider this: by stepping back and letting a man do that to which he is naturally inclined, you adopt the same attitude that you do when you don't initiate contact with a man, or when you cut off a guy that breaks up with you: you are stepping back and accepting what happens, even if it isn't what you expected and hoped for. Just like you gain nothing by artificially perpetuating a relationship by constantly contacting a guy who doesn't like you very enough, so too do you discern a man's true feelings for you by taking off the pressure and letting his actions on Valentine's Day (or at other times) reflect his true feelings for you. Don't deceive yourself by reveling in a forced sign of his affection.

If your man refuses to celebrate Valentine's Day, but you don't agree with him that it is ridiculous, your best bet is to employ the tactics of the author's wife in this post:
http://masculine-style.com/you-know-shes-a-keeper-when/


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3. Who Is This Girl?
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Who Is This Girl?

"Who is this girl??" I thought as she handed me a bottle of wine. I'd only been dating her for a few weeks and we'd probably only gone out a couple times, but here she was, meeting me at the mall to go shopping, and bringing me a gift. My memory is a little vague but I don’t even think we’d slept together at that point, or if so it had only been once or twice.

"My mom and I had a bottle of this the other night with dinner and really liked it. I noticed you had a few bottles of red wines at your apartment, so I brought this for you."

My jaw was basically hanging on the floor at this point. Girls never do this. In fact, I can count on one hand the number of gifts I have received from dates. I could almost feel my opinion of this girl increasing as I experienced some combination of surprise, gratefulness, flattery and – I mean this honestly – sexual arousal. Surprise because it was so unexpected. Gratefulness because I do like red wine, and it was a type she particularly enjoyed so probably it would be good. Flattery because she was demonstrating that she cared enough to think about me when we weren’t together. And then sexual arousal – why? I can’t entirely describe it because I have so few instances to reflect on, but I think by bringing me a gift she was being extremely nurturing and feminine, and that is incredibly sexy. It also made her stand out from other girls just because she was doing something so unheard of.

The act of gift-giving should be used sparingly. As with other demonstrations of affection or appreciation, it is only powerful because it is rare. However, it is also uncommon enough to be missed in many instances when it would be useful. It is an extremely classy, mature and sexy way of telling a guy you are into him, and therefore does not lower a girl’s value by making her seem clingy, the way a random “I’m thinking of you” text would.

Finally, I think it is important that the gift be given casually, and should not be anything valuable. This adds subtlety, and helps maintain a girl’s value. If I were given expensive cologne, it would seem like she was trying too hard, but a bottle of wine is perfect.