Valentine message can last all year

Dear girls:

I should have mentioned last week that women send valentines, too. In my Feb. 12 column, I told you that since I ran out of space I intended to continue the discussion of keeping romance alive. So girls, what did you give your valentine? A card, a special dinner, candy, a personal gift?

If you want your Valentine’s Day message to last all year, you may need to consider the three gifts I discussed last week: being a good listener, keeping your relationship unique and verbalizing or keeping the line of communication open. Those three gifts spell LUV and have been found through psychological research to be the main characteristics of long-lasting, healthy marriages.

Take the gift of listening. He comes in from work, silent and apparently distracted. You are ready to listen, but he won’t talk. About the only response you get from him is the sight of his head nodding back and forth occasionally, reminding you of those little plastic dolls that sit on the dashboard of a car. You make him comfortable, let him have a quiet time to unwind and then ask him what kind of day he had. He still won’t talk.

Recent research has shown there may be an evolutionary explanation for the difference between a man’s and woman’s need to talk. Dr. Helen E. Fisher, an anthropologist with the American Museum of Natural History, reminds us that for 4 million years men were hunters and women were gatherers. Women talked while they worked. The women raised the children and a lot of culture was passed to the next generation through language.

Men traditionally were hunters, using spatial and non-verbal skills to help them track and cover the long distances needed to hunt animals for food. As most successful hunters know, you don’t talk while you hunt. Therefore, verbal skills were used far less by men during this evolutionary 4 million years.

Men can experience closeness by simply doing something with someone – watching a ball game, working in the yard or even riding in a car together. They don’t always feel the need to talk. Many women have difficulty understanding this, as their mode of intimacy often is verbal. The key here is understanding that differences do exist, then making an attempt to cross over and be sensitive to each other’s need through practice and effort. If your sweetheart does begin to talk, listen – really listen. Don’t interrupt and start telling him about your day. If the conversation stops, ask him questions and listen.

Uniqueness is a gift that most women really enjoy giving because the opportunities are unlimited and because women are creative. Consider first that your relationship is like no other and that you intend to keep it that way. What attracted him to you in the first place was that you were different; you were special. When everyday routine begins to get boring, spice it up with new shared interests, hobbies or projects. A homemaker has daily opportunities to make mealtimes pleasing and varied; recreation times are fun and stimulating, and romantic evenings can be as surprising as you wish to make them.

The third gift, that of verbalizing, is the other part of the communication pattern, one that couples should perfect before they take their marriage vows. If talking out loud about touchy problems seems difficult, you might begin as a couple I will call John and Sue did.

Hoping to resolve some obstacles and conflicts present in their relationship, but finding it too painful to verbalize, they began by writing notes to each other. The rule was that they had to be together, to read the notes out loud and then begin to discuss them. Another rule was that each note had to begin or end with a true expression of their feelings for each other. For example, “I really care about you because you are generous. I really care about you because we have so much fun together, laughing about daily happenings.”

Valentine’s Day is a strong reminder to be sentimental, to express love and devotion. During the rest of the year we should show that we meant what we said.

Harold H. LeCrone, Jr., Ph.D. Copyright 1989