Advice For Taken Men On Valentine’s Day
Everyone says that they don’t give a shit about Valentine’s Day. But if you grew up in the United States—I can’t speak to anywhere else—the holiday was ingrained in your psyche as a special occasion from the moment you were enrolled in school.
Here’s how it happened. You were 5. You woke up one morning in February, and your mom put a red shirt on you, and sent you to school. Your classroom was decorated with construction paper hearts and sparkles. Your teacher was wearing a special outfit. Everyone in your class gave you a cheap piece of paper with a cartoon character on it that told you they loved you (unless they were an asshole or their parents forgot about the holiday). The cafeteria at lunch sold a Valentine’s Day special meal. After recess, you skipped reading, and had a big party where you got to eat delicious red cupcakes and chocolate candy. It was like the best day of your entire fucking life, at least in February, and you loved every second of it.
Repeat this for the next eight years.
Then you started high school. Shit got a little competitive. Rather than giving everyone in your class a Valentine, you had to buy them in the cafeteria to raise money for the school dance. They got delivered in public, by girls wearing heart stickers on their cheeks. One year, you didn’t get a single one. The next, you bought one for your secret crush, and she ran away from you when she saw you later in the day in the hallway.
In college, you had your first girlfriend. You tried to plan a special night. Partially because you knew you had to, but also partially to recreate the feeling that Valentine’s Day was special. You made dinner reservations at an Indian restaurant to try something different, but it turned out that you girlfriend HATES Indian food, so she started crying, and wouldn’t talk to you for the rest of the night.
A few years later, you bought another girlfriend a piece of sterling silver jewelry, and she pretended to like it. But three glasses of wine later, she told you she hates sterling silver jewelry, and did you honestly think she was going to wear something with a heart on it? And why didn’t you know what she liked? Did you not know her at all? How could you possibly not have picked up on all of the hints she was dropping that she wanted that dress she saw in the window of the store you passed last week? Were you retarded? You’re the meanest boyfriend she’s ever had.
Fast forward a couple more years. You’ve tried a little bit of everything. You’ve bought lingerie. You’ve bought flowers. You’ve taken a girl away for a romantic weekend. You’ve even tried to please her sexually. In some way or another, you’ve lost every fucking time. No matter how hard you try, you can’t ever do anything right.
So you’re kind of relieved when the girl you’re dating says to you, “I don’t believe in Valentine’s Day, it’s just a Hallmark holiday.” You’re off the hook…or so you think.
Because in actuality, even if girls say that they don’t care about Valentine’s Day, deep down, they do. They say that to shield themselves from potentially being vulnerable to you, and also because they are WAY too smart to be fooled by the advertising industry. But just like you, they can’t control that they care, because back when they were still impressionable and innocent, they learned that it was a day when they would be rewarded with declarations of love (in the form of cards) and sugary snacks (even more appealing than diamonds when you’re a 5-year-old). It was a break in the monotony of schedules and routines. It was a day to look forward to in the middle of winter.
And, if you dig down beneath all of the rejections, all of the terrible experiences you’ve had on the holiday, all of the times you’ve been bitched out and told to go fuck yourself, all of the yearning you’ve felt for girls who didn’t love you, you’ll realize that back when your mom still dressed you, you kind of enjoyed it too.
In other words, the absolute worst thing you can do on Valentine’s Day is nothing at all—for yourself, for the lady you love, and for the consumer-driven, holiday-obsessed American child that still exists in both of you.
So, even if you haven’t planned a single thing, or don’t have any time today, and are poor as shit, here are five easy and cheap things you can still do to access the innocent feeling that says today is special, and give the lady you care about access to it too:
1. Stop by the bodega on your way home, and buy her an $8 bouquet of lilacs, which are pretty flowers and smell like spring. If lilacs aren’t available, then buy her ANYTHING ELSE.
2. Go to the grocery store, and buy some Valentine’s Day candy. When you get home, pour them into the biggest glass you can find. Take a piece of printer paper. Cut out five crude hearts. On each of the hearts, write one of the things you like about the woman you’re with. Because you’re a man, and this may be hard for you, here are some good examples of what you can say: “You have really nice hair.” “I like your breath even when you don’t brush your teeth.” “You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve seen all day.” “I love waking up to you in the morning.”
Mix the candy and the hearts together in the glass, and give it to your girlfriend.
3. Take a piece of printer paper. Take a pen. With the pen, draw a stick figure cartoon that in some way relates to your girlfriend. It doesn’t matter if you’re not good at drawing, or if you’re not good at emotions. Here is an example of a storyline you can use:
Bubble 1 with male stick figure with no sexual body parts: “Hey”
Bubble 2 with female stick figure wearing triangular skirt: “Hey”
Bubble 1: “Guess what?”
Bubble 2: “What?”
Bubble 1: “I love you.”
4. Go to the grocery store. Buy a box of pasta. Buy a jar of sauce. Buy some grated parmigiana cheese. Go home. Boil some water. Throw the pasta in the water. Marvel that this takes almost no time to prepare or think about, but it still makes your lady really happy! Because even if you can’t eat what you make, you still attempted to cook your lady dinner, and that is really fucking cute.
5. Go to the bakery. Buy a bunch of cupcakes, or some other snack she likes. Go home. Say to your girlfriend: “I give you permission to eat all of these, because I know you want to.” Tell her repeatedly that she is beautiful while she stuffs her face with abandon, like she did in kindergarten. Girls spend their whole days trying to be perfect. Making decisions. The best thing you can do is give her permission to do something wicked, and then love her while she does it.
If you want to email me for more ideas, feel free to do so. I’m sitting at my computer, crying because Caleb bought me a silk nightgown I don’t like for Valentine’s Day. But if he hadn’t bought me anything at all, it would be even worse, because then today would be like any other day, and most days, I feel so numb I can’t even cry at all.
