Posted on 02/12/2005 7:00:08 PM PST by NYC GOP Chick
By DAMIEN CAVE
IET GAUCHAT arrived at his new girlfriend's apartment on Valentine's Day a few years ago with box of chocolate candy and a card. Their first date had occurred only a few weeks earlier, and since he had just ended a serious relationship, Mr. Gauchat approached the holiday warily.
He figured candy was safe - a step up from the clip-on teddy bear he'd given to someone a few years back, yielding the complaint that he was "an emotional park bench." The idea was simply to keep the relationship in play, without moving it forward.
"I gave her mine first, feeling a bit sheepish," Mr. Gauchat, a 31-year-old software entrepreneur from Hoboken, recalled. "She then proceeded to pull out this nicely wrapped box, which had a blue cashmere sweater in it."
The clearly uneven rate of exchange, he said, "was an unmitigated disaster complete with tears, followed by breakup and nasty e-mails referring to my inability to 'validate her emotional needs.' "
There are probably no couples who consistently sail through Valentine's Day, each miraculously meeting and exceeding the other's expectations, neither one feeling put out or shortchanged.
But for those in the first flush of love or lust, the day casts a particularly long and ominous shadow, forcing couples to gamble on a relationship that has barely begun. Do too much, and you scare the other person away; too little and your date may be disappointed. Most people would prefer to just shut their eyes and hope it goes away, but of course it never does.
Steve Koppes, 47, a publicist and children's book author in Chicago, was so afraid of the Valentine's Day hex that he almost stopped dating altogether. Though he had spent most of 2004 alone and mildly miserable, he had a hard time facing the prospect of colossal, public romantic failure.
"I'd just rather not deal with it," he said.
Nevertheless, there is now a woman in the picture and Mr. Koppes - still unsure of what he will do - sees Valentine's Day bearing down on him like a freight train.
"You never really know what you're going to get or what's going to happen," Mr. Koppes said last week. "People get dismissed in the dating pool for the slightest provocation so if you don't hit just the right tone, you're out."
Trying to anticipate the romantic expectations of someone you don't know that well may in fact be impossible, said Barbara DeAngelis, author of "What Women Want Men to Know" (Hyperion, 2001). "People don't realize until it's too late that each of us has a secret relationship rule book based on a combination of expectation, fantasies or even television," she said. "We come into a relationship not even realizing we have it, but we enforce it immediately."
The misunderstandings, the tears, the breakups, usually revolve around a single question. Is Valentine's Day important?
For some - mostly men - the answer is a definitive no. They tend to see Feb. 14 as "a day on the calendar that vendors promote to get into their wallet," said Michael Webb, author of "The RoMANtic's Guide: Hundreds of Creative Tips for a Lifetime of Love" (Hyperion, 2000).
Others, he said - often women - "believe that what happens on Feb. 14 will be an indication of how the rest of their relationship will play out for eternity."
For the faint of heart, there's always leaving town. Mr. Gauchat's current girlfriend saw potential trouble coming and made plans to visit her family in Oregon over their first Valentine's Day together. They've been together ever since.
And of course it helps to have advance intelligence. Lucy Fowler, 29, a lawyer in Boston, said she pulled off a Valentine's Day coup a few years ago thanks to a friend who tipped her off that a new beau would be sending a dozen purple tulips. She liked him, but their first date had been only 10 days earlier; she hadn't gotten him anything because she didn't want to seem pushy or clingy.
"I freaked out because I realized that I would have to reciprocate without making it look like I was doing so only because I found out about the tulips," she said. "I wanted things not to be awkward."
So, like a prosecutor faced with a surprise witness, she put in a call to Zingerman's, a specialty food store in Ann Arbor, Mich., where the beau had attended law school. After hearing about her predicament, the saleswoman agreed to send him an e-mail message claiming that the gift was arriving late because of a software glitch.
"He loved it," Ms. Fowler said. Eventually the pair broke up, but amicably. "And to this day," she said, "he does not know that he received bread only in response to the tulips."
Apparently that's not all that's raised.
*shudder*
I figured you had some oxen running around in circles keeping the computer powered up. Guess I was wrong.
Give us your opinions on the movie "Witness".
&
Try life as a 3rd shift workin' computer operator/network tech...I feel your pain... :)
It could be worse. I meet really nice (and often sweet and innocent) girls all of the time. The only problem is that I am twice their age and would go to prison for dating them.
Tell me which is worse: dying of starvation in the desert, or dying of starvation outside the window of a locked grocery store?
This post is really going to get me in trouble with the humor impaired...
That's cool.
Do you have any of that cake left?
Nope.
Children. And a huge hamster wheel.
Give us your opinions on the movie "Witness".
I give it three-and-a-half cow pies.
Yeah, if you have to ask if it's over the line -- it is.
We're going to the shooting range on Monday :)
My ex took me to a shooting range for a date once. I think she had something in mind, though. I wasn't sure where to stand, and, well, it almost turned out badly.
I thought it was today.
I saw all these women shopping at the mall and I was wondering where all the guys are.
I guess like all guys do, they'll stop on the way from work on Monday.
Preach on, bro...er... sister! It's getting harder nowadays to find the "right" one. General mores and expectations have changed so much, and combined with the general isolation that modern young people live in (though I'm in my 30s... but I still feel young), it's hard to meet people anymore. Folks who've been married for a while really don't know how lucky they are. Every time I hear a co-worker complain about their spouse, I always tell them, "It could be worse. You could be alone and looking nowadays!" Add to that an occupation where you don't meet many single women (or men, as the case may be) of marriagable age, and the prospects are pretty bleak...
Or at least they just seem that way. It's OK, though. Whenever the kids ask me what I'm buying for Valentines Day, I just tell them that I am to Valentines Day as the Grinch is to Christmas. Then I give 'em a quiz on what literary device I just used in that statement. Cruel, eh?
You were crazy enough to go to the mall today? You must have a death wish or something :-)
?
Going back to masculine mode, a la Steve Martin/John Candy:
"So, did you catch the Superbowl last week? Hell of a game, hell of a game!"
You're Amish. The only thing you're supposed to know about raising is a barn - so I'll assume that's what you meant.
: )
LOL
Not to worry, Kemo Sabe. Tonto old and wise and has good running shoes. Him saw heap big bad smoke signals and run like deer on first day of hunting season. ;-)
Entenmenn's.
(Yummy chocolatey Smiley.)
I agree. We go to work, then home, then maybe to Target. Its hard, especially if you are selective and don't believe in hopping in bed after one or two dates.
I hate being crusty around Valentines, but its really a contrived holiday. And the sappiness drives me crazy. At least I escape with money still in my bank account.
I'm going to go back to collecting my 23 cats. I'm up to ten.
Oh, absolutely, did you see what the coaches were wearing, though? A fashion disaster!
I'm just going to have to get myself some chocolate when I go grocery shopping. LOL!
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