Monday Musings: Romance

Romance. What is romance? To me, romance is doing something for your partner that you know will make her/him smile.  It's the thought behind the gesture.  While women can most certainly be romantic, for this posting, I'm going to focus on the man's perspective. 

For some men, one romantic gesture is to give the woman they love flowers.  At the surface, it appears to be a very romantic thing to do.  However, if they really wanted to be romantic about it, after presenting her with the flowers, they could take them back, cut the stems diagonally at the bottom, fill the vase with water (and plant food if it was included), and arrange them in the vase.  Then they could keep tabs on the flowers and change the water as needed.  It would be truly romantic for the woman to be able to sit back and really admire them, without having to do the work of keeping them alive.

Another thing some men like to do is give their women a box of chocolates.  Men think they are doing something romantic by doing this, but for us women who loooove chocolate, but dislike the way they look and are trying to do something about it, this can be a major setback.  "Yeah, hun, I appreciate the sentiment, but thanks for the temptation..."

It may seem like I'd be ungrateful with those kinds of gifts, and maybe I am a little, if I'm being honest.  But I don't need material things from the man I love.  If he wanted to be romantic, I'd be tickled pink by the small things.  For instance, instead of me making dinner every night, maybe one night he could say that he'd take care of dinner.  Even though he doesn't cook, he could still stop somewhere on his way home from work and pick up dinner.  Or, after making dinner when I cleanup the kitchen and do the dishes, if he could intervene and say "why don't you go put your feet up and I'll take care of this".  Or he could suggest going out for a walk with our daughter. It's the little things like that that I appreciate the most.

Sometimes I wish I was the man in the relationship.  I've made his lunch for him for the following day when he was out late with his guy friends, so he wouldn't have to make it when he got home.  I even took a marker and wrote "I love you" on the outside of the baggie.  I gave my husband the PS2 game, Madden for Valentine's Day a few years back b/c I knew he'd like it (his co-workers said I was a keeper and that they wished their wives/gfs/etc. would have given them that gift :) )

Sometimes I just wish that I could be one of the characters in a Nora Roberts novel, or a sappy chick-flick.  (I'd say that I'd like to be one of the characters in a Nicholas Sparks novel, but usually one of his characters dies in the end...).  I want to be able to feel the passion.  You know, get the butterflies in your tummy feeling.  The kind of feelings you get when you go on your first date.  Maybe it's just me.  Maybe I'm the only one holding myself back.  Maybe that's the problem with me wathching those kinds of movies or reading those kinds of stories.  Life just isn't like that.  But why can't it be like that?