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."
No problem. I'll take a compliment wherever I can get one. :-)
You are so lovely that I can't believe that you don't get compliments all the time.
Thank you. :-)
OK, having dealt with an emotional tidal wave last night I think I'm justified in saying that all NY women are nuts. Is that honest enough for you? The greeting card industry is populated with latter-day facists.
Patterns tend to repeat. If you want to know how you will be treated by your current partner, find out in great detail how her last partner fared.
Amen. Whats wrong with these people - especially the chicks!? Saint Valentines Day - is a Christian holiday to honor the memory of a Saint who married sweethearts in secret - NOT a holiday see who gets the most expensive present! Love is not about getting things.
Can we all take a step back from the materialistic choke hold of American culture please.....
At least he got a sweater and not a stalker.
My fiance and I don't celebrate Valentine's day. He surprises me with enough throughout the year, and we both feel it's way too hyped to mean anything. We love each other every day. :-)
Whew - she is running a little fast, eh?
Here's a little test of where her heart and head are ... ask her what she thinks of Dr. Laura. :-)
Chocolate's good. :-)
Ain't that the truth!
From the conversation, she was sweet and lovely with a great sense of humor. She did tell me of a few previous encounters where she was expecting to get married in a very short period of time and it didn't work out.
I guess the difference between men and women is that men look at every woman as a potential sex partner and women look at men as potential marriage partners. LOL
Oh, I think that she'd like Dr Laura. She's conservative. She just wants to get married. NOW!
Thank you, that is so sweet of you.
Would I be too presumptuous to say that instead of a single rose, I was hoping for a tulip tree? ;-)
Would I be too presumptuous to say that instead of a single rose, I was hoping for a tulip tree? ;-)
I don't think you would be. ;-)
I second that!!!
I baked my Sweetheart some brownies, and got him a card. He will be more than happy with that!
And a very happy St. Valentine's day to you!
Thanks. :-)
Ahhhh... if she wants to get married NOW, she's probably not a Laura fan. She recommends dating someone at least 1.5 years before becoming engaged, and have a year-long engagement. I think she'd bristle at that idea.
One of the things I admire most about Laura (I'm a she, btw) is her insistence that women NOT become the center of the relationship universe ... and her very eloquent writing about men's needs, which do exist in spite of not talking it up like women can and do.
Should be interesting ... she if she throws anything if you mention her name. And if not, see if she picks and chooses what she likes. Very good that she's a conservative!!
Well, maybe it's just that it's me. She doesn't want me to get away. hahaha
You just may be right. I don't know that I will ever find out because I'm not sure that I'll be talking to her again.
I do agree that you need time to get to know each other, but once I decide that I want to spend the rest of my life with you, I want to the rest of my life to start as soon as possible. (You get bonus points if you can identify the movie and the actor who said that.)
The more that I review that phone call in my mind, the scarier it gets. Yeah, I think that she's done.
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