Her Say: Your V-Day Survival Guide

For most men, Valentine's Day lists as one of the most dreaded occasions, right up there along with NS enlistment and meeting the mother-in-law. Because just when you reckon that you’ll need a decade to recover from the financial trauma caused by that Christmas gift from Tiffany, up creeps V-day.

But before you launch into another spiel about it being a shameless profiteering invention of our consumerist times with the price of fresh flowers ridiculously inflated (even though they’re most likely to wilt within the day), consider this: Maybe Valentine’s Day was created for the sole reason that men couldn’t be romantic unless there was a stipulated day dictating that they be.

I mean, admit it already. If Valentine’s Day didn’t exist, which of the other 364 days are you honestly going to show us the love? So don’t look upon Feb 14 with dread or disdain because you’ll only reek with reluctance and we all know how “attractive” that can be. Instead, see it as your opportunity to impress us this once, and be done for the whole year – until our birthday, of course.

But I’ll be the first to admit that women these days are hard to impress. So what’s a guy left to do? The secret: A show of thoughtful effort. What really impresses us is not your spending power or ability to come up with the most original way of spending V-day. See, you could stroll into Tiffany and walk out with a Lucida diamond ring, but a fat lot of good it’s going to do when all we’ve been talking about for weeks is the Legacy (yes, there’s more than one type of diamond). And whether you have a five-figure or $50 budget, the same principle applies.

The thought and effort is a big deal to us because we know wowing us isn’t the easiest thing to do. Picking out your V-day gift isn’t exactly a walk in the park for us either – it is, in fact, a marathon through the malls (and the distance we go to depends on how crazy we are about you). While this is, strangely, a delightful process for us and we’d like the trouble we’ve put in to be reciprocated, we know men aren’t just wired for things like getting the perfect gift. So it’s easy to earn brownie points when you’ve shown any modicum of thought put in.

Pay some attention to our whims and fancies. Lean close and you’ll notice that she doesn’t wear perfume, so you can strike buying a scent off the list. Listen and you’ll hear her gush about Australian cartoonist Michael Leunig’s philosophical sketches, so ordering a piece of his whimsical artwork online is an option. Look and you’ll see her entire Jay Chou collection, so placing the top bid on eBay for front-row seats at his upcoming sold-out gig could be the way to go. It really isn’t going to take an arm and leg to find out what would put a smile on her face and make you look like a real sweetheart.

The next step is to take as much creative license as you need to embellish the “trouble” you went into. So even if it took you all of 10 minutes and a few taps of the mouse to secure Jay’s concert tickets, giving a nail-biting account of an eBay bidding war would up your effort score by a few notches and possibly leave her bewitched.

Of course, this isn’t a fool-proof way to win her over (do check that she doesn’t already get complimentary tickets as the president of Jay’s fan club), but it will definitely play out like a well-planned gesture she can’t fault you for. I’ll be lying if I told you women didn’t like to be showered with gifts. But, they’d love more to be showered with attention. And really, what’s a little effort this once if it’s going to save you grief from us for the rest of the year?

Tags: Sex Relationships, Her Say, day, guide, help, survival, tips, valentine, Relationship, Sex, Useful,

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