7 NEW Rules for Valentine’s Day (for HIM and HER)

( Love, Sacrifice, Suffering, Death in a Jail, & other ideas … )

Many of us have written about how much Valentines Day sucks in both professional[i] and trade journals[ii].  No need to rehash the ideas and meaning behind the ridiculous commercialism of this Hallmark-generated holiday.  But I will anyway: the unhappiness women feel when their man comes up small, yada, yada, yada.  In short, (sorry about the penis jokes) many people have argued that one of the best ideas on this subject is to do away with this crass V-Day holiday altogether.

But I don’t agree.  I believe that we need to get back to the true meanings and origins of V-Day and come up with some new ideas to make it more interesting & less commercial.  So, what are these new V-Day ideas? 

Before we get to those, I want you to take advantage of my free ongoing support. You can learn EXACTLY how to find and attract the one, how to tell the DUDs from the STUDs, how to go from casual to a real commitment, how to keep the passion going and much much more by subscribing to my Dating Tips & Relationship Advice Newsletter, absolutely FREE!  Click Here to get started now.

Now back to V-Day.  It’s based on the story of St. Valentines sacrifice, suffering and death in a jail[iii].  Ok, so we won’t deal with any new V-Day ideas based on the whole death thing.  But some new ideas based around honoring the sacrifices and suffering is another matter entirely.  So, I propose some new ideas for V-Day that are based around couples achieving gainful suffering by walking a mile in each others boots.

Therefore, in the true spirit of V-Day, he spends the whole day diving into this batch of new ideas – doing these 7 KEY female activities.

(New Ideas) 7 V-Day rules for men:

• Eat salad (hold the dressing)
• Get a bikini  and mustache wax (ouch)
• Wear a tight thong that goes up crotch
• Walk all day in tight pointy shoes
• Practice hours of burn-your-arse-off yoga in a room that feels like a sauna
• Drink no alcohol (too fattening)
• Talk at length about feelings, especially painful ones

And she spends the whole day diving into this batch of new ideas – doing, well, these 7 KEY male activities.

(New Ideas) 7 V-Day rules for women:

• Eat greasy wings, dogs, burgers and copious amounts of “fresh” light beer
• Watch game while the home team loses
• Squeal, scream at big screen TV ‘til you are hoarse
• Play and suck at new video game
• Scratch crotch
• Wear unwashed sweats all day
• Are forbidden to speak to anything deeper than a basket, a foul, a bad call or clock mismanagement.

Using these new V-Day ideas, by the end of the day (the newly-designed Valentines Day), couples will be too tired to “do” it with each other.  But they can take comfort on V-Day knowing they are part of that elite group celebrated by Gladwell in Outliers.[iv]

Diana Kirschner, Ph.D. is a frequent guest psychologist on The Today Show & best-selling author of “Love in 90 Days” (dating advice book)” out now in paperback (at Amazon) & fine book stores with a new chapter on “Dating Games Men Play.” Love in 90 Days was the basis of her PBS Special on love. Connect with Dr. Diana through her free relationship & dating advice newsletter.

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[i] Kirschner, D. A. & S., February, 2009. “It’s worse than Christmas Day: Why Valentines Day Sucks.” Journal of Applied Psychological Obfuscation, 214, pp. 1-95.

[ii] Kirschner, D.A. February, 1895. “Take this Valentine and Shove It: A New Look.” The Prairie Ladies’ Home Journal, page 1 and a little bit on the back.

[iii] According to one myth, St. Valentine was martyred for marrying young men (to each other?) instead of obeying the Roman Emperor’s command forbidding them to marry.  There are, according to wiki, numerous martyrs named Valentine.  Here’s one of many ideas for V-Day that we did not publish: do not name your kid, Valentine.

[iv] Upon further peer review, it appears that these new ideas for V-Day do not appear in Outliers.

Valentine Origins & Trivia (WIKI Excerpt)

The Early Medieval acta of either Saint Valentine were excerpted by Bede and briefly expounded in Legenda Aurea. According to that version, St Valentine was persecuted as a Christian and interrogated by Roman Emperor Claudius II in person.  Claudius was impressed by Valentine and had a discussion with him, attempting to get him to convert to paganism in order to save his life.  Valentine refused and tried to convert the Emporor to Christianity instead.  Because of this, he was executed.  Before his execution, he is reported to have performed a miracle by healing the blind daughter of his jailer.

Legenda Aurea still providing no connections whatsoever with sentimental love, appropriate lore has been embroidered in modern times to portray Valentine as a priest who refused an unattested law attributed to Emperor Claudius II, allegedly ordering that young males remain single.  The Emperor supposedly did this to grow his army, believing that married males did not make for good soldiers.  The priest Valentine, however, secretly performed marriage ceremonies for young males.  When Claudius found out about this, he had Valentine arrested and thrown in jail.  In an embellishment to The Golden Legend provided by American Greetings, Inc. to History.com and widely repeated, on the evening before Valentine was to be executed, he wrote the first “valentine” himself, addressed to a young girl variously identified as his beloved, as the jailer’s daughter whom he had befriended and healed, or both.  It was a note that read “From your Valentine.”