Pls Hndle Thx: My Bloody Funny Valentine
[Ed Note: Do you have a question for next week? Send it in to advice@abovethelaw.com]
ATL -
My girlfriend and I have been dating for about two months now, and we’re both lawyers at big firms. We’re both pretty busy these days, so I haven’t cooked up anything for Valentine’s Day yet and I’m sure she hasn’t given much thought to it either. Thoughts on what I should do?
Love to Love You Baby
Dear Love to Love You Baby,
Valentine’s Day is a special time for you and your girlfriend to celebrate your love for each other. Valentine’s is also a day of shameless bragging, a day when bitter co-workers must be awed and silenced. On this day of reckoning, women objectively compare their own relationships to that of their friends and colleagues and determine whose is superior based on outlays of cash. Even if your girlfriend says that she hasn’t been thinking about it, I can assure you that this is an outrageous lie. The absolute minimum you need to do if you want to continue dating is to send flowers to her office this Friday so that her beauty and worthiness above all others may be extolled throughout the land. Flowers given in private on Saturday are about as brag-worthy as working for Jacoby & Meyers.
Beyond this critical public gesture, you need to determine what level of expenditure is required in order to avoid a fight. Personally, any Valentine’s Day that does not consist of being woken up by someone fanning me gently a with palm frond, having my steps dogged with crushed rose petals and being whisked to dinner in a gilded chariot where I am presented with lingerie made from the finest silks in Cathay and $500 in cold hard cash, I consider to be an unmitigated disaster. Doubtless your girlfriend feels the same.
Of course, naysayers will contend that Valentine’s is a Hallmark holiday, invented by florists and chocolatiers to gouge people out of hundreds of dollars. You may have heard absurdities along the lines of, “We don’t celebrate Valentine’s because it’s stupid” or “We don’t need a holiday to show our love for each other.” Let us not dwell further on these obvious defense mechanisms and transparent falsehoods; we all know that the amount of money spent is directly related to the amount of love in one’s heart.
Your friend,
Marin
The Love Guru tells us what women want after the jump.
Thank you Marin for once again exposing why Valentine’s Day is a reoccurring nightmare that any truly evolved culture would have woken up from long ago.While Marin only speaks for herself and the other fake plastic women she’s met that will soon become acquainted with gravity, she gets the true meaning of Valentine’s Day exactly right. The sole purpose of this “holiday” is to allow people to objectively compare the strength of their relationship against others using blood and treasure as the only applicable scorecard. It’s an entire day that profits off of insecurities people have about their relationships and themselves.
Even though most women know objective comparison is impossible, they still want chocolate or flowers or conflict diamonds or whatever the hell it takes for them to feel “just as special” as when Marin floats down the hallway carried by her phalanx of imaginary men.
Put another way: there is nothing that any couple has done, can do, will ever do, on Valentine’s Day that is anything other than total bulls***. I don’t care how much platinum you gild onto this fossilized dung of a holiday, at the end of the day all you are doing is basing your self worth on what somebody else thinks of your co-dependent orgy of sadness.
So what should you do for Valentine’s Day? Whatever it is you normally do when you’ve got a three day weekend coming up and want to spend time with your girl. My wife and I are going to Vegas because we’ve got some vacation time and we need new shoes.
Save the masturbatory displays of romance for when one of you really screws up.
Welcome to the real world,
A Husband
How DARE Elie accuse me of being plastic when over 95% of me is 100% real? I think I speak for most women when I say that the only plastic that concerns us on Valentine’s Day is the black American Express variety, and even then, only when it’s being charged repeatedly in our favor.
Relationships can be amazing or terrible any day of the year, and there’s no need for flowers or bite marks to commemorate it. Valentine’s is a wonderful opportunity to make co-workers insanely jealous, which is something near and dear to every woman’s heart. So have a heart and just buy some chocolates and flowers. In the end, the love you make will be equal to the love you fake.
(54) Comments
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FIRST BY MY OWN PETARD
Blah blah vday blows
no one has sent me a valogram yet here at michigan. *listens to boyz 2 men while crying softly*
- nervous T-10 1L
soon to be nervous 1L sa
But the real quesion is what to do if your significant other is part time and is not working on Friday.
women want a man they can brag about, not one that they are ashamed to talk to their friends about. act accordingly.
My sweetheart sent me a lobster-gram last year.
Ah Nervous T-10, you should have been Commenter of the Year. How the douches here voted for anyone else is beyond me.
- guest
what is this? a love advice website now? Can you tell me how I can teach my dog to poop in the toilet?
This was a funny post, gosh darn it! Way to go.
Anyway, what about what the woman is supposed to get the guy, eh? Is this holiday really just about what the woman wants? Geez.
@9: One word what she can do for him: swallow.
Elie's married? I'm stunned.
Elie: nice job. one of your strongest efforts to date, imo.
Ellie's bride is from Chernobyl. They were on sale.
I've seem M's boobs. She is about 80% real.
12 = highly credited. I usually don't care for the uninterrupted torrent of political editorializing and mangled grammar that Elie brings us each day. But, I concur that his input was genuinely funny and legitimately clever at times. I can only assume he seized this opportunity to demonstrate how much he's learned about quality flaming from the ATL commenters.
I'd have used "desperation" in place of "sadness," but aside from that and a few other nitpicks so far beneath mentioning that I won't even bring them up in an ATL comment thread, I was satisfied. Good show!
I've seen M's boobs. She is about 80% real.
Ah, valograms. This confirms nervous T-10 1L is in fact a Michigan Law student.
- Michigan Law alum
How has Elie accumulated vacation days? My estimate is he works 3.5 days a week.
2 months and she's already a gf? Too fast son. Just let her hang out with you on V day - permitting her that is enough.
19 -- you really think 2 months is too fast to be in a committed relationship?
If the two were going on lots of dates, it doesn't seem too soon to bust out the "girlfriend/boyfriend" lingo.
"$500 in cold hard cash"?
Is Marin outing her true career?
Just give her a really good f***ing orgasm. She'll forget about whatever gift shortcomings you had.
I don't expect boyfriends to spend a ton of cash on me on Valentines day. However, I agree that flowers at work are a must. After that, as long as he makes me feel special and puts some effort into making the day a happy one, then I don't require anything else.
Regardless of the holiday's stupidity, no one wants to feel left out, unappreciated, or unloved.
Guys in my high school used to make worthless posts to poorly-edited law blogs while they should have been studying the 1L subjects at their top 10 law school located in Ann Arbor (whore) all the time. It was no big deal.
True story: At my last firm, on Valentine's day, a partner came to my office with a last-minute (ha!) research question at, oh, about 6pm. He made some half-hearted overture about being sorry for the last minute nature of things, etc., and I said that I was hoping to cut out for Valentine's day dinner relatively soon with my girlfriend, but would (of course!) do the research first.
He turned around and said, half-jokingly, "You have time for a girlfriend?"
Funny, but what's the legal angle?
elie's funny response reminds me of his sophist days and why i voted for him. too bad those posts didn't reflect the crappiness of his everyday writing.
What is Sophist?
marin: just so you know the black card from amex is made of titanium, not plastic. i know, i've looked it up because i plan to get one when i live the models and bottles lifestyle.
:)
-nervous T-10 1L
soon to be nervous 1L sa
whats a valo-gram?
a warm splattering of semen on the face should be sufficient.
30: i don't know what a valogram is, i haven't gotten one...and i only have one more class today.
:(
-nervous T-10 1L
soon to be nervous 1L sa
A box of wine, a tube of astroglide, and a football. What more could you want on valentines?
Marin speaks the truth.
And I thought every woman wanted a Pajamagram.
@33: are the astroglide and the football to be used in tandem?
Valentine's Day is Saturday. Ergo, no need to waste money on "flowers at work."
Also: "reoccurring" nightmare?? Really?
I don't at all agree about flowers sent to the office. It just doesn't seem professional or appropriate to have flowers at the workplace on Valentines Day, to me at least.
38: perhaps it's not professional if you work in a prison where color and cheer are generally not acceptable. But, in a business setting, it's perfectly acceptable and expected.
37 wins. This advice is 100% irrelevant this year.
I'd rather flowers on Monday. That way they don't die in the office over the weekend.
25: Said partner probably has a wife, right? I love these jerks who have their personal lives all set up (disastrous though many of them are) and expect you to sacrifice your own personal life to the firm.
22: She's been faking it.
38: you are obviously a man, or an angry lady that has never received whore flowers ever. :3
38: you are obviously a man, or an angry lady that has never received whore flowers ever. :3
Some of you are married to or dating women EXPECTING flowers on Friday because that's when their coworkers can see them. Marin is 100% right about that point.
It all depends on who you are dating, but every woman in a decent relationship (2 months is long enough) expects *something* on Valentine's Day. Even if it's a cute card and a couple of Hershey's kisses (which would be enough for me - I'm married). Now is not the time to tell her you think it's a Hallmark holiday. Even if she thinks that it's a Hallmark holiday and you've agreed not to go all out on gifts for each other, you must acknowledge the day. It doesn't even have to cost you money, it just has to show that you care and at least put 30 seconds of thought into it.
The perfect gift is obvious:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhwbxEfy7fg
Dear Marin:
With all due respect, you sell yourself short.
In my world, true love is marked not by a gift from FTD, rose pedals, rented limos (chariots), or the cash equivalent to cab fare to the outer boroughs.
Rather, precious jewelry--NOT bling from the Shane Co.--but rather the Neiman Marcus precious jewelry counter, Tiffany, Shreve & Co., or better (Van Clef, Harry W....) carries the day.
Of course, it is advisable to pre-book at a 5 star restaurant to deliver said baubles, but barring that I would suggest a bottle of Veuve Clicquot, if not a vintage bottle of Krug and an ounce of Petrosian Beluga—and you can dazzle her by whipping up some toast points. (Wonder Bread, cut off crust, toast, cut into triangles.)
Roses are for losers and CEO’s of financial companies receiving TARP funds…..
As not prestigious as working at Jacoby & Meyers may be, they have not announced any layoffs...
As not prestigious as working at Jacoby & Meyers may be, they have not announced any layoffs...
Whose advice should we take? Elie, who will be spending Valentine’s Day with his wife in Vegas? Or Marin, who will be spending Valentine’s Day alone in her apartment knitting Christmas sweaters with her five cats?
Ugh, Marin gives women a bad reputation. Don't listen to her. Not all women are that stupid.
My advice? Nip this little problem in the bud now. If you think you might be with this girl for a while, you do not want to set a bad precedent of ridiculous valentine's day expectations. Have this discussion now: "Hey, when I was a kid, my (fill in name of relative) died on Valentine's Day so I don't feel that it is right for me to celebrate it. Is that ok with you, honey? (Insert pouty face)" Problem solved forever!
Even if meant facetiously, only a true NYC JAP could ever have the absurd obnoxiousness to write that the receipt of “cold hard cash” was part of a romantic day.
Thanks for that 50.
Signed,
J & M first year, not in fear for my job right now.