5 Ways to Have a Completely Miserable Valentine’s Day: Part 2, Couple’s Edition

1. The most important thing about Valentine’s Day is the hints.  Each February the average woman drops approximately 2,944 hints about what she wants.  Of these hints men pick up about 4.  On the other hand, men will drop 0 hints, and of these women will pick up about 3,997. Any hint that goes unfulfilled is a chance for a miserable February 14^th. 

2. Establish the biggest expectations you can come up with, then insist that you have no expectations.  Then when your lover decides they want to stay in, watch Bond movies, eat frozen Snickers, and go to bed early, you can be really really upset.  But you said you had no expectations! Anything for Valentine’s Day is great! You’ll have to hold your hurt feeling inside where they can fester and make you completely miserable.

3. Talk about your plans until your single friends destroy you.  Whenever you are around your unattached friends, make frequent mention of all the lovely and romantic things you’re going to do with your SO. While your poor lonely friends might not physically harm you, the tension and hatred will make everyone in the room sufficiently miserable.

4. Comparison is key.  Use other couples as the standard to which you hold your own relationship.  Even if you’re both introverted agoraphobes, everyone else is going out to candlelight dinners under the Eifel Tower with violins and chocolates and a new car with a puppy inside!  You must match and escalate!  CANDLELIGHT DINNER UNDERWATER!!!  Chances are really good that you don’t have the imagination or the capital to achieve the evenings other couples are capable of, but comparisons will cement your misery.

5. Breakup.  Save up all of your grievances and hurt feelings until Valentine’s Day night.  Go to the most public place you can find and have an increasingly tearful and heatedly angry argument.  Be sure to end in screams and slammed car doors.  Next, find your most single friend (the one who’s been single for the most consecutive Valentine’s Days) and cry on their shoulder while you help yourself to their barbecue Pringles and Triple Brownie Carmel Hazelnut Ice Cream. If you’re lucky, you’ll end Valentine’s Day scrubbing chocolate sauce out of your shirt while holding an ice pack to your broken nose.

6 Ways to Have a Completely Miserable Valentine’s Day: Part 1, Single’s Edition

1. Everything around you is a reminder that you’re still single.  Don’t let any opportunity to wallow in your solitude pass you by.  Every engagement ring commercial, every buy-one-get-one-free special, every smiling simpering couple is a reminder that you are probably going to die alone.  Let each of these instances sink in and fill your soul with regret and despair.

2. Misery loves company, so drag as many people down with you as you can.  The best way to do this is when someone says the words “Valentine’s Day” you counter with “psshhh, you mean Single Awareness Day.”  If that doesn’t quite do the trick, add a “that spells SAD.”  If you need more misery munitions, whenever someone near you is acting affectionate, peer at them sadly and then look away as if it’s too painful to watch.

3. Eat as many simple carbohydrates as possible, preferably straight from the container.  If you can manage it without utensils, even better.  You want to eat as much as possible, but you don’t want to be physically ill, so pace yourself.  Vomiting is regular misery, which will distract from Valentine’s brand misery.

4. Belligerently spend the night alone.  For best results, watch movies until the wee hours of the morning whilst carefully observing step 3.  Be extremely selective in which movies you watch; nothing will spoil misery quite like distraction.  Avoid action, suspense, horror, sci-fi, and anything starring Bruce Willis.  Choose instead films detailing the perfect romances of fictional characters, especially romance stories centered around February 14th. 

5. If step 4 doesn’t fit your style, go out to dinner all by yourself.  Tell the host to sit you at a table for two, then spend an hour eating bread and glancing around with decreasing eagerness for your lover to show up.  Slowly descend into a deep depression until you are sobbing quietly into your lemon water.  You will accomplish step 2, and you might get a free dinner from a sympathetic manager. (If you want to break Valentine’s Day itself, as you’re leaving the restaurant walk past a table with a happy couple, stare at them in teary horror, say “how could you do this to me?” and throw a drink in one of their faces.  Either one with do.)

6. Whatever you do, don’t think about all the great things about being you.  Pointedly ignore all of your best qualities and focus on all the things that make you so unlovable, thus landing you alone for yet another Valentine’s Day.  Maybe list them aloud as you drive from you fake date to your house to assault a bucket of ice cream with your face.  If you follow these steps, you’ll be well on your way to the most miserable Single Awareness Day of your life!

7 Reasons Why Women Love Villains

It’s no secret that girls go for the bad boys, and nice guys finish last.  We often attribute this magnetism to the most obvious thing these villains have in common: villainy.  But are women really drawn to evil doings and nefarious deeds?  Not usually.  As it turns out, everything women find attractive about bad boys can also be achieved by nice guys without losing any niceness.  

1. Women are attracted to power.  While you can inherit money, estate, and even position, true power is something you have to earn.  A man with true power is a man people follow, fear, and respect.  When the hero wins in the end, it’s not usually because he overpowers his opponent.  He usually wins by luck, strategy, with the help of his plucky underdog friends, or because the villain’s lack of human compassion caused him to forget something very important.  Until his demise, a proper villain holds the balance of power. 

2. Villains are unpredictable.  A plan laid by a villain is layered, twisted, with lots of surprises.  A hero’s plan is usually “this is something I have to do alone.”  Life with a villain might be unstable, but it’s always exciting. 

3. Villains are old fashioned woman-chasers.  While the protagonist is out there in the friendzone demurely wishing his lady love would notice what a great guy he is, the bad guy is out there making his intentions very clear.  There’s no beating around the bush or polite stand-offish childhood friends here! 

4. Villains are mysterious.  The hero of a story usually has a secret identity, but that’s the end of the mystery.  But someone who’s willing to destroy cities for revenge on a single person has a pretty dark past.  A hero will probably reveal all of his secrets if you wear him down with acceptance and understanding, but a villain will always keep you guessing.  It’s a paradox, really; as much as women want men to be honest, secrets are sexy.

5. Villains are often very rich.  Sometimes stupidly rich. You need a lot of capital to bring a large population to its knees.  Many of our most famous superheroes are pizza delivery boys and struggling newspaper reporters.  Of course there are a couple of wealthy superheroes, but name me one poverty-stricken super villain.  Go on, I dare ya! 

6. While men are out saving lives, women are out saving hearts.  Surely underneath that gruff exterior and those angry glances is a wounded soul that could be loved into redemption.  Women are nurturers who also love a challenge.  With occasional glimpses of the man beneath the mask, villains keep their ladies coming back for more. Of course, good guys often have past trauma and dark childhoods, but they’re often too noble to let their ladies in, often shunning their potential lovers in the name of “keeping them safe.” 

7. Villains know who they are and what they want.  You don’t ever see them acting conflicted over what to do, or how they should use their power, or if they’ll rise to their great responsibility.  They never go crying to their elderly manservant, or their elderly great aunt, or their elderly mentor, (don’t these people have any friends their own age?) they know what they want so they are not stopped until they obtain their desires.  Or they die.