From a guy’s perspective

photo courtesy of http://blogs.trb.com

For a guy, there are three occasions in which the responsibility falls solely on you to make sure that your female counterpart has an enjoyable and memorable experience: Birthdays, anniversaries and possibly worst of all, Valentine’s Day. It’s a toss up between birthdays and Valentine’s Day, but both put lofty and sometimes unreal expectations on a boy.

When it comes to Valentine’s Day, other than the anomaly relationship where the two people are perfect for each other, know exactly what to do and get the other person and where it’s just a matter of time before they get married, most people are at a loss of ideas.

You’ve been unsuccessfully thinking of ideas in the back of your mind for about a month, and in crunch time with less then a week left, you’ve got nothing.

It doesn’t help that she’s told you that you don’t have to get/do anything. Any guy knows that’s simply not the case. What’s worse is she says nothing on the topic but you can see the daydreams of expectations creep in during leisure time.

It’s not all negative though. There’s no way you can completely forget Valentine’s Day. Diamond commercials and big brown bears with chocolate boxes endlessly remind you every direction you turn in the supermarket.

All the expensive gifts and grand gestures really make you miss elementary school when you simply recieved a Reese’s peanut butter cup and a shyly hand written card on construction paper and you were the talk of the class.

It’s a girl’s worst nightmare to be ignored on Valentine’s Day while seeing all the other girls getting presents and flowers. Barney Stintson put it best when he proclaimed Feb. 13, the day before Valentine’s Day, as Desperation Day. The one-day of the year when women lower their standards out of desperation in order not to be single on Feb. 14. Regardless if Desperation Day is an actual occurrence, it just may be the first step in an interesting psychological experiment.

While some loathe the idea of a gift-giving holiday like Valentine’s Day, for the creative males it provides a great opportunity to show off what you can do. The end result after a Valentine’s Day doesn’t always have to be bad. It’s just as possible for a boy to strengthen a relationship through a positive and thoughtful gift as it is to hurt it by giving a lazy “good for one back rub” hand written coupon that was clearly scribbled out two minutes before your date.

In reality, the day is not about gifts but simply being together and showing appreciation that he/she is a part of your life. Somewhere along the line corporations jumped in and told us to think of the day as if you didn’t really care if you were spending a lot of money. What’s worse is most of us believe that and think that is the only real way to show appreciation.

I guess a good indicator that you’re with the right person on Valentine’s Day is if you are both able to show appreciation for one another in a genuine way. If you both understand that it’s about spending time with one another and not the flashy displays, everyone can recognize a genuine gesture.