The Last Crusade of Relationships

[RetrogradeOrbit]

Hmmmm, Valentine's Day or as I like to refer to it...

The day when men who have not been going out for very long with their girlfriend get ripped off by the descendants of the b******s who invented the thing in the first place. Mind you, the former is certainly quicker to say.

Why not do something nice for your partner every day, even if it is just making them a cup of tea in the morning before you go to work...

 

[Erzengel]

I agre that where they go probably does play a part, too. I wouldn't go too fancy. Might give the impression that he's trying to make it too special ... plus I like Ruby Tuesday's haha.

So do high school kids needing a place to go on a Friday night in the suburbs.

 

[RetrogradeOrbit]

Yeah but going out together on valentines, your going to run into valentines related themes in restaurants, parties in pubs, even valentines specials in cinemas or valentines shaped biscuits in the coffee shop your in.

You can ignore it, but the valentine's monster is still there

Seriously, I can't stand how Valentine's Day is thrown down our throats by the media every year. And if you dare to ignore it, you must be some kind of unfeeling monster.

 

[hopefuldreamer]

This is exactly how my mum's boyfriend feels about it. He buys her flowers at least once a week and has done for 5 years. They do nothing on valentine's day

Personally, I'd just love to experience a bit of a fuss on valentine's day one time... But that's cause no man has ever bought me flowers, or chocs, and I've never been with a guy on valentine's day

 

[Rocketman]

Porn is everyone's friend.

 

[Erzengel]

I like Valentine's Day.

I get stuff.

 

[hopefuldreamer]

Plenty of women will consciously reason and SAY that they love getting gifts early on. Unfortunately their subconscious does not agree, and that is generally her motivating factor. Women are not like men in that way. They do not tend to make decisions on logical reasoning. Some things can sound nice but in reality are a turn off.

Sadly do have to agree with that.

Met a guy once who wasn't from my town, but seemed to really like me. He asked what I was doing the weekend after next and I stupidly told him it was my bday and that he could come out with me that weekend if he wanted.

He was the absolute definition of NOT playing it cool. He rang me every day until he came down (about half of those calls I ignored, and half I took out of guilt), and then showed up a night early and just expected me to be happy about it even though I had plans with family and had told him that.

He asked me what my favourite colour was and when I asked him why, he said it's cause he wanted to get me a bday present.

It turned out he bought me a necklace, though I never saw it, cause after him coming on so strong I very fiercly backed out of the whole thing. Told him he was obviously looking for something much more serious than I was, and that it was a bad idea for us to see each other again.

But he got really weird then. Showed up at my local, was really odd with my friends, and when I found out he was keeping his hand in his pocket because that's where his knife was and it made him feel safer, I confiscated it and pretty soon after ditched him and completely ignored his calls...

... He did eventually go away, but he was hanging around outside mine the next morning like a stalker...

I have a history of attracting weirdos tho.

My point is, men should definitely NOT invest that much too quickly!

 

[Lily Adler]

Yum. Fruit. Can be construed in many ways. I like you, but you need to eat healthier and lose weight.

 

[SpideyVille]

Yum. Fruit. Can be construed in many ways. I like you, but you need to eat healthier and lose weight.

Or it could mean: I like you and want you to live a longer, healthier life so we can be together longer.

 

[Nave 'Torment']

It's funny how the media works here though. Today was the national "First Day of Spring" holiday where kids and couples usually dress up and go about and do stuff together. Sort of like a more traditional version of V-day. The focus is never on gifts but more on just spending the day together.

The media never hypes it these days. Like ever. Instead, everyone's focused on St. Valentines (which is tomorrow here). My magazine did a pitiful job at publishing a double-special edition highlighting both... and ended up making itself look pitiful instead of funny.

The thing is I hear many a guy say the exact same thing and it's funny how quickly all that goes out the window when they meet a specific girl.

Doesn't explain why I kept thinking that even when the specific girl was the one who convinced me to say that in the first place.

But truthfully? I just don't feel like being in a relationship at the moment. Take that for what you will. If someone else comes by and convinces me otherwise, well good on her.

Plenty of women will consciously reason and SAY that they love getting gifts early on. Unfortunately their subconscious does not agree, and that is generally her motivating factor. Women are not like men in that way. They do not tend to make decisions on logical reasoning. Some things can sound nice but in reality are a turn off.

This. If seduction is what you're going for (and honestly, it is) then yeah, you have to play on the subconscious / unconscious mind rather than the conscious one.

Doing that successfully? Well, that's another story.

EDIT: But it's not like us guys are renowned for our ability to logically assess everything before taking action, either :

 

[Erzengel]

Doesn't explain why I kept thinking that even when the specific girl was the one who convinced me to say that in the first place.

But truthfully? I just don't feel like being in a relationship at the moment. Take that for what you will. If someone else comes by and convinces me otherwise, well good on her.

You haven't had a significant relationship since high school. Could be fear of being in any committed relationship.

I remember one of my "fears" when I first started dating in high school. Well....what do you talk about?

 

[Nell2ThaIzzay]

SuperMike, I said nothing of buying her gifts.

At most, I'm going to take her out for some ice cream or something. I don't even have ideas of taking her out to dinner. It's been -one- date, and as good as the date went, I don't have any delusions of romantic grandeur.

She's the one who said she wants us to go out again. Tuesday is around when I would have been contacting her again anyways, Valentine's Day or not, and since it -is- Valentine's Day, I feel like taking her out for a nice treat - NOT a fancy dinner, not buying her gifts - would be appropriate.

I'm not going to have a box of chocolates in my pocket, or a bouquet of flowers, or a card, or anything else. I'm not buying a gift for this girl.

 

[Dark Raven]

SuperMike, I said nothing of buying her gifts.

At most, I'm going to take her out for some ice cream or something. I don't even have ideas of taking her out to dinner. It's been -one- date, and as good as the date went, I don't have any delusions of romantic grandeur.

She's the one who said she wants us to go out again. Tuesday is around when I would have been contacting her again anyways, Valentine's Day or not, and since it -is- Valentine's Day, I feel like taking her out for a nice treat - NOT a fancy dinner, not buying her gifts - would be appropriate.

I'm not going to have a box of chocolates in my pocket, or a bouquet of flowers, or a card, or anything else. I'm not buying a gift for this girl.

It sounds like you should be alright then. Just go out and keep it very casual and relaxed. If it's not Valentine's day but happens to be on Wednesday instead, then that's fine too. Wednesday would probably be less pressure because it isn't of any particular significance and therefore something could develop more easily than being on Tuesday. Just contact her and ask if she's free on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday and see which day she picks. If she goes for Tuesday, then maybe she wants something more (or maybe not) and might be an encouraging sign, but if the other days, then that's all good too.

Asking her which day she is free during this particular week puts the ball in her court so that if anyone looks like they're attaching significance to V day, it's her.

 

[Anita18]

Because we as nerds are too intellectual for our own damn good and often end up outsmarting ourselves.

Please, most of you are pseudo-nerds at best. My sister's bf and my bf are the EPITOME of booky computer nerds (what do they do for fun? PROGRAM) and they didn't think nearly so hard as any of you about dating.

And like I said, doesn't the fact that the husband is being abusive mean that he's being unfaithful? That in itself could even be interpreted to fall under the accepted Biblical grounds for divorce.

In the case of your friend, I'm not going to advocate divorce as the first resort. They should seek marriage counselling. However, again under the umbrella of "unfaithfulness", the question does arise as to whether your friend's husband is being "faithful" to his marriage vows by not supporting her or the children and not being invested in the relationship. So would that be grounds for divorce? It's difficult to say in your friend's case as she has to decide for herself ultimately.

Yeah I think they've been trying to go to marital counseling, or at least it was something they considered when she initially filed the divorce papers. No idea what happened to that idea...

Yes everyone can agree that he's not following his own marriage vows by failing to cherish and support her. But you've got to know her personality - she's the "give give give" type. Never thinks of herself. Last Thursday she spent all night baking 200 or so cookies for her children's Valentine's Day party at school. Why did it fall to her to do that even though she's a full-time grad student and a single mom to two young kids? (I'm sure no other parent in any of her children's classes are in a similar situation!) I'll let you do the math on that one.

So to her, it's HER job to cherish and love her husband, and if he doesn't reciprocate that, it's her duty as a wife to continue cherishing and loving him despite that. I have no idea how she will react if he escalates to physical abuse. I hope it really doesn't come down to that. I think the only way to reason with her is through the children. It's be one thing if she was making a choice just for herself (and that's sad enough already), but it's not just about herself.

I mean hell, even when she was still 100% married, she'd talk about how her relatives were telling her she needs to "take care of herself" (ie, get her hair done and lose weight) so her husband would find her more attractive. So due to their more traditional views, they might believe it's all HER fault that he doesn't love her anymore. And she's very close to all her relatives so I wouldn't be surprised if she internalized any of that.

I always got to explain things…

You don’t ever buy a gift for a girl you have only had only 1 date with. It makes you look like a suck up.

This even applies to valentines day, Christmachanakwanzika, or her fraggin birthday. NO, put your wallet back in your pocket. Put down that card, those flowers, the box of chocolates, the poetry and that 5 page essay of undying love etc…
No.

Guys who overly emotionally invest in a girl, after going on only one date, look desperate. The faster you start to treat her like a princess the sooner you look like a servant, and not a charismatic lover. All that early gift giving does is make you look like a desperate approval seeker. Cut it out.

Don't forget that some of you guys are gonna be terrible gift-givers. So the less gifts you give, will be less stressful for you! My bf is one of those people. On our second date or so, he got me some roses. Except, do you know what you have to do when you get flowers? You have to cut the stems and put them in water. So he sat around for 10 minutes while I did that, because it would have been disrespectful if I had just dumped them on the counter. And he had chosen a particularly bad bouquet (these were even from Whole Foods!) because the heads started falling off when I was cutting the stems. And I'm the very opposite of a bull in a china shop! I've operated on mouse embryos! I gave up halfway so some of the roses in the vase were taller than the others. And then I told him that even though I thought the gesture was sweet, please don't get me flowers again.

My bf normally takes me out to dinner for "special days." Which we normally do anyway, but I don't mind. I remember one Christmas I had knit him handwarmers, and he felt guilty he hadn't gotten me anything (for Christmas! ) , so he asked if he could give me his used Macbook Pro that I'd been planning to buy off him. I wasn't going to say no to that.

Not to mention, it sets the expectations for the rest of the relationship. One of my friends who recently found herself a bf, he pulled out all the stops for her birthday pretty early on. Like, multiple gifts, a picnic lunch in a park...all that stuff. And now she's asking me for advice about WTF to do with his upcoming birthday since she hadn't planned anything nearly so fancy. This will obviously come into play if you've got a more independent woman on your hands.

Save the fancy stuff for the proposal. Set expectations low for every other time and lessen stress for both of you.

I like Valentine's Day.

I get stuff.

Those flowers I can get behind. I can eat them!

Sadly do have to agree with that.

Met a guy once who wasn't from my town, but seemed to really like me. He asked what I was doing the weekend after next and I stupidly told him it was my bday and that he could come out with me that weekend if he wanted.

He was the absolute definition of NOT playing it cool. He rang me every day until he came down (about half of those calls I ignored, and half I took out of guilt), and then showed up a night early and just expected me to be happy about it even though I had plans with family and had told him that.

He asked me what my favourite colour was and when I asked him why, he said it's cause he wanted to get me a bday present.

It turned out he bought me a necklace, though I never saw it, cause after him coming on so strong I very fiercly backed out of the whole thing. Told him he was obviously looking for something much more serious than I was, and that it was a bad idea for us to see each other again.

But he got really weird then. Showed up at my local, was really odd with my friends, and when I found out he was keeping his hand in his pocket because that's where his knife was and it made him feel safer, I confiscated it and pretty soon after ditched him and completely ignored his calls...

... He did eventually go away, but he was hanging around outside mine the next morning like a stalker...

I have a history of attracting weirdos tho.

My point is, men should definitely NOT invest that much too quickly!

Didn't you just say you never got such attention from guys?

I get it though - I have a friend who's the same way, she attracts weirdos (or her interpretation of weirdo, which IMO is too broad) and bemoans how she NEVER gets attention from guys and it's like, "Um, you do so ALL THE TIME. They're just never the guys you want! "

 

[Erzengel]

I'm an awesome gift giver.

 

[Anita18]

I'm an awesome gift giver.

Does Erzette try to equal or one-up you or has she given up on that?

 

[Erzengel]

She took me to Vegas and bought me a MacBook in November.

I was like....****.

 

[Anita18]

She took me to Vegas and bought me a MacBook in November.

I was like....****.

And I assume you're not going to give up?

 

[Erzengel]

We are calling a truce as this year we really need to buckle down with our expenses but I knew she wanted a designer bag so I got her one for Christmas. Now hopefully we can be more frugal with our spending.

 

[Hound55]

I hope you'll like your new yacht...

 

[Optimus_Prime_]

Guys who overly emotionally invest in a girl, after going on only one date, look desperate. The faster you start to treat her like a princess the sooner you look like a servant, and not a charismatic lover. All that early gift giving does is make you look like a desperate approval seeker. Cut it out.

Actually I think you've kind of twisted the issue here. Gifts are not an emotional investment. Even though Girls can be after emotional investment, guys can be too I think, "gift giving" is a monetary investment; something no one expects right away (unless they're gold diggers). A lot of guys get confused over what the word "emotional" means. Gift giving is tit for tat behavior. For example if a girl bought me a car I would feel really bad because I cannot repay such a gift. From the other perspective, sex is free. So you shouldn't offer a higher price for something that started out free to begin with.

Plenty of women will consciously reason and SAY that they love getting gifts early on. Unfortunately their subconscious does not agree, and that is generally her motivating factor. Women are not like men in that way. They do not tend to make decisions on logical reasoning. Some things can sound nice but in reality are a turn off.

This is where I think you give the worst advice. "Plenty of women" don't say anything. There are women who expect gifts early on, but most don't, and most don't say they do either. Listening to a woman is key (even if you're trying to act all aloof or something).

Also this; "They do not tend to make decisions on logical reasoning", is bullsh**. Women's "reasoning" is not substantially different from a man's. In fact I think emotionally we're pretty close to. Women can be highly logical. You see it all the time. Women who will stay with someone who is less-attractive, less-suave, less-confident because they "logically" and "reasonably" provide the most stability. Naturally the singles crowd isn't going to be overflowing with these kinds of people, but so many guys shoot themselves in the foot because they treat women "differently" than men.

Flirting is an excellent example of this. Guys friends rib each other constantly, sometimes even bicker and argue, and guys who are simply casual acquaintences will usually act overly friendly towards one another. The difference being the former is not a relationship in which the two people are interested enough in each other the deal with the other one's sh**. Flirting works the same way. Much like guys, when I interact with a female I like I'm willing to be more edgy, let my hair down, and act like a d**che. Hence with flirting sometimes seems more like teasing, or even arguing.

 

[bullets]

SuperMike, I said nothing of buying her gifts.

At most, I'm going to take her out for some ice cream or something. I don't even have ideas of taking her out to dinner. It's been -one- date, and as good as the date went, I don't have any delusions of romantic grandeur.

She's the one who said she wants us to go out again. Tuesday is around when I would have been contacting her again anyways, Valentine's Day or not, and since it -is- Valentine's Day, I feel like taking her out for a nice treat - NOT a fancy dinner, not buying her gifts - would be appropriate.

I'm not going to have a box of chocolates in my pocket, or a bouquet of flowers, or a card, or anything else. I'm not buying a gift for this girl.

I think you made the right decision. If your taking her out that night then small gifts wouldn't be necessary.


I've been going out with a girl for a month ( i think) and he birthday is a week after after valentines. I joked that if we ever got married it should be in feb so it would be easy for me to remember everything. I took her to see The Vow which I'm counting as a valentine's gift. Not sure what I should do for her birthday , probably just take her out again. I doubt she'd expect a gift or a card.

 

[Anita18]

We are calling a truce as this year we really need to buckle down with our expenses but I knew she wanted a designer bag so I got her one for Christmas. Now hopefully we can be more frugal with our spending.

Famous last words!

Yeah my bf is quite generous, but he doesn't plan anything out so it never really coincides with holidays. Last week for some reason he offered to buy me an iMac and I was like, "Um, I thought our thing was for me to get your OLD stuff, not for you to buy me new stuff!"

I am frugal to the max and would be if he bought me something that I knew I could have gotten for cheaper elsewhere. I even told him I wouldn't really want to wear an engagement ring that cost more than $2K ($1K would be optimal, and do-able considering my tastes), but considering his tastes, he'll probably go over that. Eh, nothing says he has to tell me how much it costs...

 

[Anita18]

And just like that, the mailman arrives and it turns out he's sent me a V-day card! How cute!

 

[Erzengel]

I see Anita with a Superbowl equivalent ring on her finger.