While single women apparently need survival guides for Valentine's, single men use the day to celebrate their freedom by hunting the wounded and love-starved women nursing their loneliness at the local watering hole. For men in long term relationships, Valentine's is a day of obligation. While there are plenty of standard gifts for women—-flowers, chocolates, stuffed animals, candlelight dinners—-there are no such gifts for men. This is because the V-Day vision of romance marketed to us appeals entirely to female sensibilities; there's no analogous holiday that celebrates the filthy things that turn men on.
If you're frustrated because of your man's lack of romance, ask yourself what you've done to appeal to his "sensitive" side, by which I mean his divining rod. What follows are gift ideas your husband would actually list if he followed the advice of "relationship gurus" and was completely honest with you about his needs. The list is not as much for new couples whose brains are so cranked up on dopamine and oxytocin that they're about as rational as functional coke-heads. It's for those couples in the trenches, the ones who have survived five or more years together through kids, mortgages, unemployment, in-laws, and near divorces. Yes this list is chauvinistic, but Valentine's is a gross feminization of relationship ideals. By definition, men see the world through the skewed perceptions of male desires, which are often irrational, politically incorrect, and in opposition with what we write on your Valentine's Day cards.
This article appears in Feb 10-16, 2011.