Originally published Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Valentine's Day has come and gone and no doubt left many an otherwise blissful couple dealing with a heart-shaped assortment of unmet expectations. You bought her flowers and she wanted jewelry. She wore a fire-engine red lace teddy to bed and you had your "heart" set on black latex. You brought edible condoms and forgot she was a diabetic. And why wouldn't things go wrong? We're just arbitrarily demanding on one specific evening out of the entire year that all the men prepare for romance and all the women prepare for sex. How could that go wrong? (Hell, why not just perform a mass cross-gender brain swap?)
February 14th isn't about how much you love your significant other, it's about how well you can exactly meet his or her expectations of what it takes to prove you love him or her sufficiently. And that's a tough nut to crack (no pun intended), because no matter what you may think you know, the reality is that you probably haven't got a clue what he or she really wants.
As far as Valentine's gifts go, more is usually better, but there are exceptions. Love isn't poker*; two dozen roses will usually beat one dozen roses, UNLESS the one dozen roses were delivered in a gold-leaf trimmed box with a red ribbon by some kid wearing a name tag, and the two dozen were hand delivered by you in a plastic grocery bag with the little adhesive paper price sticker still attached.
While there's some debate about who Saint Valentine actually was, it appears he met a pretty gruesome death, being brutally beaten and then decapitated on the orders of the Roman Emperor, Claudius II. As I think about Valentine's Day, I can't help wondering whether the two were dating. I bet St. V. left the tag on the flowers.
*Don't even go there.
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