There was a girl named Joan. She was madly in love with a man named Richard, so Joan called him. She cooked meals for him. She bought him gifts. In return, Richard accepted the gifts. He ate the meals. Sometimes he even called her, just as friends. But Richard was an idealist looking for the perfect woman. He never was interested in Joan. He chased after women of great beauty, and was rejected many times. After many failed attempts Richard at last returned to Joan, the girl he could always count on. In time, he even bought Joan flowers, and eventually Joan and Richard got married and lived happily ever after. That is true romance as it actually happens.
In the TV version Joan looks like Miss Universe, and Richard has the body of a professional athlete with the sweet personality of Charlie Chaplin. Richard sweeps Joan off her feet with flowers, candies, and gifts, but then an evil beauty steals Richard away. After many tears and dramatic moments, a typhoon accidentally brings Joan and Richard back together again, and as fate would have it, they get married and live happily ever after. That is romance as it happens in the movies.
How realistic are the movies?
I had the great fortune in college to live in a house with two housemates. One of them was a very pretty Taiwanese girl named Samantha. Samantha treated us housemates like family, and she cooked for me when my friends would come over. I spent many a night curled up in Samantha’s borrowed electric blanket, drinking tea or coffee and talking the night away with Samantha as she worked on her architecture projects. To this day we are still friends.
Samantha was the kind of girl that many guys wanted to marry. She was beautiful, exotic, old-fashioned, and talented, and she had a nice personality. As a result, living with Samantha I was able to get an inside view at what happened after Samantha's many suitors pitched their opening lines. There were two important observations: 1) Pretty girls receive thousands of gifts and offers from lovelorn men but they treasure none of these gifts because they get so many that gifts mean nothing. 2) The lovelorn men always lose in the end.
Beautiful or cute women do not live the life that normal average women do. I never realized how many offers and gifts that beautiful women actually get. But I saw them with my own eyes in Samantha's room and in our living room. It was tragic, really, the way the men made fools of themselves, and imagined that she loved them. This was the men's mistake: instead of waiting until they were sure that they had become Samantha's boyfriend, they declared their love with gifts and presents prematurely, hoping to sweep her off her feet. But in return for all their flowers and presents and expensive dinners, the men got exactly nothing in return. They didn’t know about rule number one: the only person who appreciates your gifts is the person who is in love with you anyway, without the gifts.
When I first moved into the house, the first thing I noticed about Samantha’s room was that it needed no decorative wallpaper. The walls were adorned with dried roses. As a hobby, Samantha was in the habit of drying flowers, so all the roses that she received from men she would hang upside down on her wall. After time, the wall looked like a parade float completely covered with flowers. But not only were there dried flowers in the house; there were always fresh flowers in a vase on her desk and more in our living room.
I remember we didn't have a table in our living room, but one of Samantha's male acquaintances drove 400 kilometers to our house, set up a table in the living room, and Samantha didn’t even say “Thank you” to him. But that was normal for Samantha's suitors. They always did her favors, but she never asked for their favors-- they volunteered-- so Samantha didn't feel obligated to say thank you.
Aside from flowers and furniture, some men sent ballet and theater tickets, and once Samantha received plane tickets to Hawaii along with two weeks lodging. She also went out to expensive dinners about twice per week. In teasing her, I always referred to these outings as “dates” but Samantha told me that she honestly never considered them dates. They were just “a chance to meet people.”
In my opinion the dates were a chance for guys to give her favors with no strings attached. Samantha enjoyed feeling like a celebrity, and accepted the favors, but never felt obliged to give the men anything in return. Whenever Samantha accepted a favor, the men would react as if Samantha's accepting their gift was a sign that meant she was accepting their love. But Samantha never loved them. She reasoned, “Hey, I never asked for these things, so I don't owe these men anything.”
Often Samantha would return home from an expensive dinner outing (the guy always paid) with a Styrofoam box filled with an uneaten dinner and she would feed it to us roommates. I imagine all the suitors thought that Samantha really ate those dinners, but she just gave them away to her roommates. We roommates loved her for those tasty dinners.
A few times there would be long letters in broken handwriting wedged in the mailbox. And a few times I answered the phone and heard men's whimpering voices-¬shaky, hurt, cracked from weeping. I joked with Samantha, “Hmm. A 40-minute call. It must have been important.”
“Important to him,” she would answer calmly.
Every one of Samantha's suitors had a certain took in his eye, a kind of optimistic, happy-go-lucky dreamy look. They had the kind of facial expressions that announced, “I'm in love. She's a beautiful girl with a great personality. I see how she treats her roommates, friends, and family. If only she would treat me that way! I've got to show her how I feel. I've got to show her that I'm different from the other guys. That I really care.”
They all thought to themselves, “I've got to show her my love.” Then the men brought gifts. And the men thought, “Good, she accepted my gifts. It means she will soon accept my love.” All of those suitors thought that the dinners and presents and tickets they bought were special and treasured, but actually Samantha just gave them away to people whom she really cared about. The men were just fans to her. It was as if they were not real people-- neither family nor friends nor lovers. But she did accept their many gifts.
Let me ask you a question. In your opinion, was Samantha an unkind person?
Here's a paradox. All those suitors with their courtship and fancy presents didn't get the slightest bit of gratitude from Samantha. Yet here I was-- a roommate and friend of the family-- and Samantha cooked and cleaned for me, made dinner whenever my friends came over, and took care of me whenever l was ill, in spite of the fact that I was not her boyfriend (she never liked me in that sense). So what's the lesson in all this?
The lesson is: single guys with fancy presents get nothing but suspicion. I'm sure you've seen television commercials where a young well dressed man suddenly spies a beautiful woman and then rushes into the street to buy her a bouquet of flowers (or a cola). The idea here is that flattery, and buying commercial products will get you everywhere. But it's not true. When she gets the flowers, chances are that she'll smile because her self image gets a boost, and not because she likes you. She'll be flattered at her own prestige, but it's no compliment to you.
The appropriate time to give presents is after the relationship has already bloomed. Never mind what they do in the movies. Never declare your love early. If you're already the girl's boyfriend, and you give her flowers, that's great. You're a hero. You're considerate. But if the girl does not already like you. and you give her flowers you've wasted your money on a technique that loses nine times out of ten.
So that’s rule number one: The only person who appreciates your gifts is the person who is in love with you anyway, without the gifts. What happens if you try to win someone over who doesn’t already like you? That’s rule number two! “If he takes two steps forward, don’t trust him because he wants something from you. If he takes two steps back, he’s a jerk. See, he didn’t get what he wanted, so now he’s acting like a jerk.”
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