It’s Valentine’s Day, so if you haven’t planned anything at this point it’s probably too late.
But I want to make a brief comment about holidays and romance anyway.
I think a lot of guys view Valentine’s Day as a burden. They “have to” do something for their lady or she’s going to be disappointed. They feel pressured.
So they are mostly planning things for the day defensively.
“I’ve got to get a reservation at a nice restaurant.” “I’ve got to get flowers.” “I’ve got to get her a present.”
In other words, they feel obligated to do something for their woman. They need to check some boxes. They might expect a positive response from their efforts, but if we get down to it, they are mostly trying to avoid a negative one.
It would be great if men didn’t think like this, and the prospect of doing something nice for the woman they love were exciting for them. It really is your perception that creates the difference in how it feels. Romance can be something you get to do, or it can be a burden.
(Of course, I understand a lot of guys don’t like doing this stuff not because they have an issue with it in theory, but because they have a ton of resentment for their woman. Because in the past when they have put effort in, she’s not been very grateful. We could spend a whole piece talking about fixing this kind of bad blood and lack of appreciation. But let’s keep this email focused.)
I know, I know. “Hallmark created Valentine’s Day to sell cards.” Who cares. The bottom line is Valentine’s Day is celebrated by society, and it matters to women. The bar for some might be lower than others — many “low maintenance” women might even tell you they don’t really care or want anything. But don’t be fooled: they are lying not only to you but to themselves. They might not make a big deal out of it, but part of them is going to feel hurt when nothing happens — especially when they see romance happening to other women around them.
The truth is that NOTHING in life goes well if you don’t put any effort into maintaining it. Relationships are no different. You only have two romantic celebrations a year (anniversary and Valentine’s Day). Is it really so much to ask that you check some basic boxes, and book a restaurant and get a present or some flowers? The gestures are small, but they mean a lot — including to the women who say they don’t.
That said, I don’t want people to get the wrong impression. Doing this stuff doesn’t make you some Don Juan — it’s the bare minimum. Still, that’s OK most of the time; while more is obviously better, you don’t have to go all out for every romantic holiday to have a great relationship. Very few women would honestly expect you to.
But every now in then you should do more. You shouldn’t get complacent. Put a little extra time and energy into the plans, or splurge a little more than usual. Get her something truly gorgeous. Create a fantastic experience for her. Write her a love letter that touches her heart.
And then maybe every few years, go all out. Leave no stone unturned, and make it a romantic experience she’ll never forget.
I (kinda) went there for this Valentines Day, and I’ll give you an example of what I did:
(Note: we celebrated on Wednesday. You don’t have to celebrate exactly on the date.)
To be honest, the meat and potatoes of the experience wasn’t all that new. We have date night every week consisting of a hotel and dinner. This is usually 1-1.5 hours being intimate / having sex, and then catching up, discussing business, sharing personal and family plans while we eat some good food. It’s 4 hours a week of purely me and her, and I credit this ritual with so much of the strength in our marriage. No matter what we’re dealing with, be it work or kids (or the federal government), we always make sure this time together isn’t affected. It’s paid dividends beyond what I could imagine.
The only difference this past week was that I took her to our favorite restaurant in the area (more high-end than usual), and added another hour into the evening so we could also do an escape room together. We hadn’t done this since pre-kids / COVID, and it was a really fun bonding experience. My wife loves puzzles, but she’s a much more concrete / mechanical thinker whereas I’m more conceptual / abstract. It’s interesting to see how our different intelligences work; when they’re put together we’re a great team. The challenges weren’t a walk in the park, but we solved them without any hints; the guy working there was very impressed. It was an auspicious start for the night.
Beyond this, the main addition was mostly gifts. I got her the latest Evie magazine, some flowers, diamond jewelry, a love poem I had written about her… and a few intimate things for both of us in the bedroom, including some of those silly “sex act cards” and the liberator wedge pillow. (My incomplete mini-review: a little overrated and hardly a game changer, but still a net-positive). Over the course of the evening, she had a full spectrum emotional experience: she puzzled, she laughed, she cried, she moaned, she shared and connected. It was a beautiful evening, and we both enjoyed ourselves very much.
I wouldn’t call this an absolutely elite date only because I didn’t take her anywhere flashy / exotic or leverage any status (besides knowing the owner of the restaurant and having a long chat with him). But for a married couple with a 2 and a 4 year old, it was nevertheless a pretty excellent Valentine’s Day. And I intend to check some of those extra “glamour” boxes this summer for our 10 year wedding anniversary. A long weekend in the mediterranean, just for the two of us — especially after the past 4 years of hell — I think is overdue.
But will I do something like this every year? Probably not, and certainly not in exactly the same manner. I’ll still be a little extravagant, but maybe in one category only. I heard of one example of focused-extravagance earlier today with one guy. He didn’t plan anything big for his wife, he just had so many flowers sent to her at work that she needed a bucket to hold them all. Suffice to say her female co-workers were very jealous at this abundance of love. There’s no aphrodisiac for a woman quite like being the most desired in a group of females.
Sending your wife 100+ flowers might seem absurd, but the reality is that there isn’t any real romance without extravagance. I wrote a piece somewhat on this in prison — “Extravagance and Energy” — which alluded to this idea. It mentioned that a woman might get comfort from the security of man’s wealth / provisioning, but the only way money creates desire is if a man spends it freely and almost carelessly. And of course, since money is a proxy for energy, it’s the same thing with any action. Women aren’t attracted to misers or men who are too practical. They love men who have such confidence and conviction that they splurge — especially on them.
So if you want to be romantic, you need to make an extreme gesture here or there for your woman. It doesn’t have to be an expensive one. It could be you exposing yourself to public embarrassment for your love, making some open declaration of devotion. It could be cooking a full three course, candlelight dinner for her. It could be making a trail of rose petals up to the bedroom.
Any and all of these things. What matters is simply that you extend yourself beyond her expectations; that you risk yourself in some way for her. This means some element of surprise, but also superfluousness. It’s being generous beyond logic or necessity. To a woman, that’s love.
The only catch?
In order for your romantic gesture to amplify her feelings for you, the woman has to already desire you first.
This is where most guys get screwed with romantic gestures, and where many a neophyte-man gets frustrated by the seeming “inconsistencies” in female demands. They hear women wax poetic about wanting romantic gestures, and then wonder “OK, so why did this girl ghost me when I did that?” The answer is simple: this girl didn’t like them when they did it. You can’t win a girl over with a romantic gesture; if she doesn’t like you, it’s going to just make her feel very uncomfortable. That’s because romantic gestures don’t create desire; they create comfort. People don’t understand this because romance can make a woman go absolutely feral with desire for you, but that’s because comfort amplifies desire: a desirable man giving all of his attention and energy to a woman is her ultimate erotic fantasy. But that desire still has to be there first. And desire is typically created by aloofness, rather than investment.
In other words: the devil as always is in the details. Before you do something romantic for a girl, you’ve got to know where you stand with her first.
Most guys in serious relationships don’t have to worry so much about this, because a woman will rarely commit to you if she doesn’t desire you on some level. The main exceptions to this are men who have lost their woman’s desire, but still have her commitment on paper — these women tend to ignore and disrespect their men, and on a long enough timeline, cheat on them. Because these relationships suffer from desire problems, the guys typically need a degree of dread game and serious fitness / behavioral changes to salvage them. Romance won’t help — in some cases, it may even hurt.
But again, this isn’t where most relationships are predominately deficient. Most relationships actually need more comfort — there is too much “taking each other for granted.” And romance is a great, perhaps the best tonic for this.
So I hope this gives you some general feedback of for the importance of romance in relationships, and how to proceed.
Single guys: the same rules apply when it comes to romance, and I would encourage you to keep this arrow in your quiver. You can blow a woman away with a romantic gesture, even if you barely know her — many amazing relationships are born of romantic gestures.
(In fact, in some cases you want to refrain only because you can make a woman fall too hard for you by doing this. If you’re not as much into her, it can break her heart — so use it responsibly! I know this from experience.)
But the success will depend fundamentally on whether or not she thinks you’re attractive when you make. Calibration, context, and some playing of the odds is thus necessary.
I understand, of course, that in practice this is hard. For example, a woman can disrespect you if she’s disgusted with you, but she can also do it when she resents you for not paying more attention to her. What the woman wants in both cases is completely different, even though how she’s behaving towards you seems very similar.
And what happens if you give such a woman the wrong thing? You get set back further.
That’s the problem with internet platitudes, and why for real success with women you need to learn discernment.
Which is where I come in.
Whether you’re in a relationship that needs a little extra passion, or you’re a single guy trying to make an amazing impression on a pretty girl — you reading a women’s signals is paramount. You need to be able to diagnose what is going on in an interaction, otherwise you can’t proceed.
And that just so happens to be what I do best.
I won’t only help you understand what’s going on in your relationship, or what went wrong in a date — I will teach you over our months together to see through the matrix of male-female dynamics like I do. I will level you up, little by little, from novice to master.
