Love Lessons: We Think We Are So Much Smarter Than We Actually Are

The other day Jeremy and I were having our annual in-office romantic lunch. I had the Beef-n-Cheddar, while he opted for the more traditional Regular Roast Beef. Why was it romantic, you ask? Because there were curly fries, that’s why.

After looking longingly into each other’s eyes while we playfully wiped Arby’s sauce off of each other’s chin, we decided to surf the web together at my desk for a few minutes. A headline on the Yahoo! home page immediately caught my attention. It read: 10 Must-Avoid Spots on Valentine's Day. Or so we thought. In reality, it actually read: 10 Must-Avoid Spots for SINGLES on Valentine's Day. Very different.

Before realizing our mistake, Jeremy immediately shouted out “Strip club! You shouldn’t go to a strip club!”

Maybe he shouted it out a little too loud, because moments later several of our co-workers, all male btw, were huddled around my desk wondering what was going on. Jeremy assured them that there was no strip club emergency at this time and he was sorry to send out a false alarm.

This worried me. Is there some sort of guy-code in our office about strip clubs? If one of the men shouts out "Strip club!", does that mean that a trip to one of these establishments is imminent? Or does it mean that when a man blurts out those two words that he has a strip club story to tell? And really, couldn’t they have thought of a signal that is a little more subtle? I mean, when us women in the office have a good tale to tell, you don’t here us shouting “Three-way with members of the University of Utah's men’s swimming team!” Well, not anymore. That woman quit a few years back. I’m just sayin’.

Back to the list. As Jeremy and I read down the list that we thought was of the 10 places that you should not go on Valentine’s Day, we were perplexed as to why bed and breakfast joints, candlelit restaurants, cozy ski lodges and gourmet chocolate shops would make the top ten.

Eventually, as we usually do, Jeremy and I figured out our misread of the headline. We then spent the next ten or so minutes trying to convince the other one that we knew all along that the list was geared toward single people and that we were just going along with the joke for the other’s benefit. (Folks, you should know that we do this a lot. It’s our foundation for a strong marriage. In our relationship, love means never having to say your sorry…just so long as you can convince the other person that you were being wrong on purpose.)

Jeremy and I then thought it might be helpful to produce our own list of sorts. The 10 Must-Avoid Spots for Married Men on Valentine’s Day. You’re welcome.

1. Sizzler (Avoid the all you can eat and unflattering lighting trap.)
2. Strip clubs (Liberal use of glitter, and again, unflattering lighting.)
3. Your secretary’s house (Needs no explanation.)
4. Your mom’s house (Why would you?)
5. Free clinic (Again, why?)
6. Emergency room (Neither to just “hang out” as a place to meet women nor as the result of injury sustained when your wife catches you at secretary’s house. See # 3.)
7. Greeting card section of any retail store. (Because you shouldn’t have waiting so long to pick out a card for your wife, that’s why. I always make it a habit to run to Target or Wal-Mart on Valentine’s Day so I can give dirty looks to all the men scavenging the already picked over Valentine’s Day card section. How could you wait so long? I do this on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day as well.)
8.Tattoo parlor (Love doesn’t always last forever, but ink does. The wise man would opt for the less permanent piercing.)
9. Sizzler (I guess I just can't stress this one enough.)
10. Jail* (No explanation necessary.)

*As with virtually everything that is written here at Steenky Bee, not all advice should be taken to heart. These are only guidelines, mere suggestions. My roommate in college had a brother, a perfectly nice guy, who met his future third wife, a booking officer, as he served a 24-hour stint in County Jail on Valentine’s Day. (I said he was nice, I never said he was a lawfully abiding citizen.) They were happily married for well over a year. This guy then went on to meet his fourth wife at a family dinner. She was the cashier at Sizzler. True story.

This post brought to you as part of Sprite's Keeper's Spin Cycle. This week's topic: L-O-V-E.