Yahoo has an article entitled 4 Ways to Ruin Valentine’s Day — and How to Avoid Them. In this piece by a Men’s Health columnist, this male expert offers four key ways to improve a guy’s chances at scoring bonus points with his girlfriend on Valentine’s day. It might not be obvious from my name, but I’m a girl, so I’m filled with all of that illogical nature that SushiAttack rants about. So you can take my word when I say that this guy doesn’t know jack about how to impress a woman at all, and I pity whatever poor sap tries to “wow” his girlfriend on Valentine’s Day.
Let’s start off with what this guy suggests men should do. 1) Instead of getting the girl a card, write her an *email* describing your top 10 reasons you love her. 2) Instead of roses, buy her orchids because they’re exotic, not cliche, and will last longer than roses. 3) Instead of going out to a restaurant for dinner, order take out foods. FINGER foods that require you to feed each other using your hands. 4) Instead of lacey lingerie, buy her comfortable cottom boy shorts and a tank top.
Okay, so now that he’s set up his suggestions, let me tell you why a girl would NEVER EVER EVER appreciate this approach:
- The most important thing a guy needs to remember about any type of special occassion is that thought and effort are paramount. A guy really needs to have some sort of tangible item to present to his girlfriend. An email won’t cut it. Cards are cheesy and have nothing really meaningful at all in them. But that’s why you write a message inside of the card. Take those top 10 reasons you love her and write it in the card. Or, if you don’t like cards, write it on stationary and leave it for her in front of her keyboard. An email is too convenient and lacks a certain amount of thought and effort. It’s like why 99% of women would never consider ever sending an evite in lieu of a paper invitation to their wedding. Electronic format lacks a level of specialness and it shows that you can’t even take the time to walk to a grocery or drug store. In this case, form is only slightly less important than substance.
- Next: Pay attention to what your girlfriend likes. If she’s the traditional type, roses are likely exactly what she likes and she’ll like them on Valentine’s day. If she’s mentioned that she doesn’t really like flowers b/c they die so quickly, maybe get her something else that she would prefer. A gift of something that she’s really been wanting is probably going to be more appreciated than a mere traditional token that she doesn’t really like anyhow. If she does like orchids, then go for them. If you don’t know if she likes flowers, err on the side of caution and get her some. It’s a rip off on Valentine’s day, but the thought and effort are always going to be appreciated. No guy ever really got slammed b/c he was thoughtful and got his girlfriend the traditional expensive sign of love. Only true bitches can voice that complaint. If she does, you’ll still win if you spin it as I said. If not with her, then in the publicity war if she complains to anyone else. They’ll just think that she’s selfish and you’re a sweet, thoughtful, romantic boyfriend.
- Think about the mood that really turns your girlfriend on. If she is a foodie, she’ll likely love to go out on Valentine’s day and try out some new restaurant. If she is more of a homebody and really hates crowds or is just really zonked from work and being out all the time, then ordering in is likely a good option. Just think about what types of foods she would want. Finger foods can be possibly arousing for desserts, but I doubt anyone is really into the idea of feeding each other the entire meal. I mean, in reality, nobody’s really jonsing on the idea of eating eggrolls and sushi that’s shoved in their face by their boyfriend. And please, if you’re going to handfeed each other, don’t try anything messy like buffalo wings or swedish meatballs. You’re just asking for more gross and sloppy than erotic there. BUT, something that every guy should consider is some sort of chocolate covered dessert to hand feed each other. A little bit of feeding each other is good. An entire meal is unnecessary. And dessert is the end, so you can still end up with some great intimacy to segue into more interesting activities.
- TRY to imagine what your girlfriend might think of the message you’re sending her with the gift. Okay, lacy lingerie is without a doubt really for the guy. Nobody can argue against that. But women do like to feel sexy and feel that their boyfriends still think that they’re sexy. Giving her boyshorts and a tank top instead of lingerie trades the sexiness for the dumpiness too much. A woman will think for at least a split second that there’s some sort of unpleasant negative connotation in such a gift.
Okay, so now that I’ve addressed this article’s suggestions, here are a few more tips on what to do for a girl’s special occassion.
- Try to take queues from your girlfriend. If she mentions that she wants something, write it down. Or, even better, Amazon now has a great feature called Gift Organizer. You can create separate entries for each person in your life and save various items for them as potential gifts. That way, if there’s no special occassion immediately approaching, you’ll have saved yourself some headache in the future.
- Learn from history. It gets said all the time, but take what you know from the past and adjust accordingly. Also, your girlfriend will likely hope/expect for the same amount of effort and thought that she put into your birthday or whatever last special occasion. If it was pretty laid back, you should at least try to meet that baseline. You will have the higher ground if you at least met the level of effort and thoughtfulness that she put into doing something for you.
- Remember that all girls are different. These suggestions are pretty true as a whole, but of course all girls are different with different levels of expectations. I’d say that I’m a pretty low maintenance girl. I don’t expect to have really expensive gifts or dinners liek some skankyass gold digger, and I’m pretty chill with my demands. Take these suggestions as the minimum. Your girlfriend may have higher expectations than me.
Anyhow, this post may prove SushiAttack right about the illogical nature of girls, but regardless, we’re here, and if you want to have a decent relationship with a girlfriend, you just have to accept the fact that your’e dealing with someone who’s not always the most logical person in the world.
orified rat or the raccoon dog. I’m voting for the raccoon dog because 1. Dogs are man’s best friend and unless you are Buffalo Bill you probably aren’t looking to wear your best friend on your back. 2. I don’t understand how we got off the subject of using mink fur anyway. I may be misguided but it seems a little silly to worry about the mistreatment of rats. When was the last time a rat came when you called him?
I’ve always been an earlier adopter of doing taxes online. First using the free online services to do nothing more than allow you to enter in figures off a 1040ez . As my income grew I moved on to filling out the 1040 long form. I found the process extremely easy and effortless. At present day I’ve been using Turbotax for six years, and I’m feeling somewhat trapped. I admit that its mostly my fault that I’ve become so comfortable using their interface and not to mention the great feature that allows you to roll forward information from previous returns, especially losses (ouch.)
When I moved into my current apartment, I was faced with furnishing an entire kitchen by myself for the first time. For a semi-foodie, this can be a really great sort of fantasy regarding what kinds of kitchen appliances you’d like. For a real foodie, the possibilities must be nearly orgasm-inducing. (yeah, japadamus, I wrote “orgasm.” stop flinching.) Instead of just getting the $10 on sale slot type of toaster, I opted for the $150 
cook food, so it will convert conventional oven settings’ temperature and times to its own infrawave light cook times. The toaster’s display is fairly simple. There are a few presets for cookies, pizza, and toast (all of which I’ve used to varying degrees of adequacy), but generally, you select a category (such as poultry, meat, baked goods, casserole), input the conventional oven temperature and time, and boom, you get a new estimated cook time. I’ve mainly used the oven for chicken and toast, and both of those have a drastically reduced cooking time. The chicken normally takes about 55 mins to cook and is about 39 minutes now with the Infrawave. It also does a fine job of cooking fish, which can be somewhat tricky if the temperature’s off by too much.
