Girls - What Does "Romance" Mean To You?

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My wife begged me for a digital camera to replace the one she had stolen out of her bag on a recent flight. I demurred, then revealed the digital camcorder I'd gotten her that also takes still pictures. She liked that.

― Young Fresh Danny D (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 14:38 (seventeen years ago) link

Dan knows.

― teh_kit (g-kit), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 14:40 (seventeen years ago) link

I was asked for, and amongst other things, got my gf a very nice knife last Xmas. It made me ever so slightly nervous.

― M. White (Miguelito), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 14:42 (seventeen years ago) link

Okay, the knife is hilarious.

(xpost) An iron. Wow. Well, the right person probably would love that (apparently your mother, Laurel!).

I hate ironing.

And yeah - Dan has the right idea. (Possibly expressed in the phrase, "go one better.")

― Sara R-C (Sara R-C), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 14:44 (seventeen years ago) link

THE IRONING IS DELICIOUS

― Young Fresh Danny D (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 14:45 (seventeen years ago) link

(I actually love ironing but hate folding, hence the gigantic pile of clothes on the bed in our guestroom.)

― Young Fresh Danny D (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 14:46 (seventeen years ago) link

I was gonna say.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 14:46 (seventeen years ago) link

They weren't tears of joy!!

― Laurel (Laurel), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 14:47 (seventeen years ago) link

I've been paying for some really trashy hotel rooms. Apparently, the coarser, the better.

Dan, FYI, your wife really likes the "Mission to Mars" room at Fantasy Suites.

― Fluffy Bear, among 100% of the population (Fluffy Bear Hearts Rainbows), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 14:48 (seventeen years ago) link

My mother regularly gives people scouring pads and tape as presents; I think she'd love an iron.

(xpost: I know, I've got the tape.)

― Young Fresh Danny D (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 14:49 (seventeen years ago) link

Dan, if you love ironing, I'm not sure we can be friends anymore.

On the other hand, would you please move back to Minnesota? I will do your crazy piles of laundry, including folding, if you will iron for me.

Also, I love your mother.

― Sara R-C (Sara R-C), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 14:49 (seventeen years ago) link

I mean, my dad thought it was a good gift cos it was pricey and well designed and would make the task of ironing easier (HER JOB, NATCH) and she'd get lots of use out of it and be a little bit cheered every time. He wasn't wrong about any of that, but she was looking for a something a little more traditional/scripted, I think.

― Laurel (Laurel), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 14:50 (seventeen years ago) link

btw, the hueg stuffed polar bear thing - it's just between us lot, ok?

― teh_kit (g-kit), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 14:51 (seventeen years ago) link

Mission To Mars room = you get greeted by a shitty CGI alien who shows you how the room came to be built while Tim Robbins bangs on the window gasping for air?

― Konal Doddz (blueski), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 14:51 (seventeen years ago) link

One of the gifts my mother gave us last Christmas was a 16-pack of Chapstick.

― Young Fresh Danny D (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 14:51 (seventeen years ago) link

The whirlwind of sand is downright unhygenic.

― Fluffy Bear, among 100% of the population (Fluffy Bear Hearts Rainbows), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 14:52 (seventeen years ago) link

Laurel, I feel so much better about your Mom now!

My friend who got the placemats took them back to Target and exchanged them for some jewelry. Her husband - who has a huge ego - was a bit crushed.

(xpost)

Dan - do you know that I am a lip balm addict (as well as lipstick)? You don't think your Mom would adopt me? (And consider switching to Burt's Bees...)

― Sara R-C (Sara R-C), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 14:52 (seventeen years ago) link

Chapstick, tape, batteries, pens: those sound like classic stocking stuffers.

― Fluffy Bear, among 100% of the population (Fluffy Bear Hearts Rainbows), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 14:54 (seventeen years ago) link

she was looking for a something a little more traditional/scripted, I think.

perhaps also personal? gifts that relate to chores can be a drag.

― . . .and a soda on the side (Molly Jones), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 14:54 (seventeen years ago) link

No no no. Body butters from The Body Shop = best stocking stuffers ever.

(xpost to Fluffy Bear)

― Sara R-C (Sara R-C), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 14:55 (seventeen years ago) link

I love how this is rapidly becoming the "Love Hastings Style" thread.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 14:56 (seventeen years ago) link

Yeah, if the gift had to do with a particular love of hers, that would be one thing (a good iron would be AWESOME for me, because I only use it for sewing, which is personal). But the ASSUMPTION of CHOREDOM implicit in Mom's new iron just...sucked.

― Laurel (Laurel), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 14:56 (seventeen years ago) link

(I actually love ironing but hate folding, hence the gigantic pile of clothes on the bed in our guestroom.)

I have gotten much better at the whole folding the clothes thing, but I am definitely the designated ironer in our house. My gf can't iron to save her life. She bats her eyes at me and her voice gets all girlish and then she asks me to iron her shirt or a skirt or something - it's not exactly romantic.

― M. White (Miguelito), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 14:57 (seventeen years ago) link

I love how this is rapidly becoming the "Love Hastings Style" thread.

I don't. I just find it confusing. :-( I suppose now I'm starting to see the anti-Balkanisation stance, when neutral threads are taken over by Balkans I'm not part of.

― Three In A Bed Socks Romp (kate), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 14:59 (seventeen years ago) link

are there unilateral and bilateral conceptions of 'romance'?

Yes. Evidence that the man is thinking about you and appreciating you, and understands that this appreciation should be expressed every now and then, not just assumed.

but aren't we talking about the forms that that evidence and expression should take? and are there certain forms of evidence and expression from which people "just assume" meaning?

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 14:59 (seventeen years ago) link

how is this thread becoming balkanised? other than a hotel reference (which was pretty funny) conversation has seemed open.

― . . .and a soda on the side (Molly Jones), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 15:00 (seventeen years ago) link

I even find flowers not quite romantic. The knife thing might qualify 'cause she likes to cook and my favorite knife is a bit too big for her but flowers are really for the house, not for her. We don't really do a lot of romantic things when we're supposed to: Valentine's Day or our anniversary, but that's 'cause I think we both like things spontaneous or, at least, less predictable.

― M. White (Miguelito), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 15:02 (seventeen years ago) link

I just bought two expensive all-cotton dress shirts. I look like crepe paper at work.

― Fluffy Bear, among 100% of the population (Fluffy Bear Hearts Rainbows), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 15:02 (seventeen years ago) link

I don't think that Hastings has a unique or unusual view of love or romance. (Romances that take place in Hastings are completely exempt from this view. However, no one here is there, so...)

― Sara R-C (Sara R-C), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 15:02 (seventeen years ago) link

I don't even know what Hastings is! isn't it a mall records store?

― . . .and a soda on the side (Molly Jones), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 15:03 (seventeen years ago) link

Apparently not all girls want to have sappy songs written about them, this is what I can contribute.

― got yourself a fish biscuit! (nickalicious), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 15:04 (seventeen years ago) link

(Hastings = a town with a sinister history. Also, Dan Perry is from there. And me. And FB. And others. WHICH HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH MY LOVE OF BODY SHOP BODY BUTTERS! Trust me, it's all separate.)

― Sara R-C (Sara R-C), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 15:07 (seventeen years ago) link

My ex did not like the nickname, Boom Boom Kitty Fuck.

― Fluffy Bear, among 100% of the population (Fluffy Bear Hearts Rainbows), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 15:08 (seventeen years ago) link

but aren't we talking about the forms that that evidence and expression should take?

Yes, because the "appreciation" statement you quoted above is completely correct and pretty much a given. There's nowhere to really go from there except concrete examples.

As for just assuming, for some people (traditionally men of a certain age and generation) the act of working a soul-killing, unfulfilling job all day in order to bring home regular paychecks is a kind of evidence...but it's not particularly romantic and it's actually terribly sad and unnecessary outside of, say, the gold mines of Cripple Creek, Colorado, and it would take a pretty grimly understanding kind of wife to accept that sacrifice and consider it "evidence" enough.

― Laurel (Laurel), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 15:08 (seventeen years ago) link

https://www.babowlingstore.com/itmimg/homer.jpg

― mookieproof (mookieproof), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 15:08 (seventeen years ago) link

GRILLED CHEESE SAMMICHES.

― Jessie the Monster (scarymonsterrr), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 15:28 (seventeen years ago) link

i can understand it being something different to a different generation, but it seems, well, demeaning to me for romance generally to mean 'something a man does for a woman' (which isn't to say that it isn't romantic in every instance for a given man to do something, even a very culturally traditional something for a given woman). i object to it specifically, but also in the general sense in which it seems to be related to the apparent attitude some women have in regarding a relationship/date/etc. as something for them to experience primarily through the agency of another.

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 15:38 (seventeen years ago) link

No, I don't agree with that. It seems to me to mean "man PAYS ATTENTION to woman as individual" - I don't think that's something that's blah blah primarily thorugh the agency of another. That's woman demanding to be accepted and loved in her own right, for her own qualities.

― Three In A Bed Socks Romp (kate), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 15:44 (seventeen years ago) link

My better half sometimes draws pictures of robots on little pieces of scrap paper and leaves them where I will come across them unexpectedly.

LE CUET!!!!!

― Allyzay lives aprox. 200 feet away from a stadium (allyzay), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 15:44 (seventeen years ago) link

In my experience, the ladies like it if you buy them an autographed first edition of their favorite book.

― Pork Cheops (willpie), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 15:44 (seventeen years ago) link

Oh jeez, I'm not a girl though. Sorry.

― Pork Cheops (willpie), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 15:45 (seventeen years ago) link

Also, in the modern world of the Sean Penn Theory, quaint notions like 'romance' are obsolete.

― Pork Cheops (willpie), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 15:46 (seventeen years ago) link

Just better hope they're not big fans of, say, Aeschylus, Pork Cheops.

― M. White (Miguelito), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 15:47 (seventeen years ago) link

Seriously, food is always a good way to go, and it works both ways.

Also, spontaneous actions can create a body of reference for future romance.

― Fluffy Bear, among 100% of the population (Fluffy Bear Hearts Rainbows), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 15:47 (seventeen years ago) link

GRILLED CHEESE SAMMICHES.

seriously, are these a universal aphrodesiac?
it's well documented that i would trade all i have and myself as well for a decent g.c.s.

― otto midnight (otto midnight), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 15:47 (seventeen years ago) link

gabbneb, I don't think anyone's saying that, this thread is just asking women's opinions specifically.

― . . .and a soda on the side (Molly Jones), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 15:48 (seventeen years ago) link

We've only hit romance in this thred from perspective of a woman in a hetero couple, an awfully specific viewpoint that leaves out a lot of other stuff. I don't think anyone is saying that other stuff DOESN'T EXIST...? Ie romancing men, romancing partners of either gender, etc.

CHRIS, WHO TOLD YOU THE SEAN PENN THEORY?? Was it me? I can't remember.

― Laurel (Laurel), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 15:49 (seventeen years ago) link

There has never been a question specific enough on ILX, even when it is made blatantly specific in the opening paragraph as to why the question is being directed exactly as it is, that it prevented one of about ten people from showing up on the thread and making some tangentially related political point that "refutes" something no one actually said, guys.

― Allyzay lives aprox. 200 feet away from a stadium (allyzay), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 15:50 (seventeen years ago) link

Also, is there a problem with romance being something that's experienced through the agency of another? What if that's just the nature of the thing? You can do awesome things for yourself obviously! but that's probably something other than "romantic" per se.

― Laurel (Laurel), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 15:51 (seventeen years ago) link

If we're going to be totally cliched about it, I'd say that in my experience, men don't *want* to be romanced, they just want to be *sexed*.

― Three In A Bed Socks Romp (kate), Wednesday, 11 October 2006 15:52 (seventeen years ago) link

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