On the high (financial) cost of serious dating...

How much does it cost to dating someone? Sometimes, looking back, my husband and I would laugh about it, since we skipped most of it (not that we didn't put in the time, since we've been together for almost six years before we got married).

According to the approximation of a study, the ballpark figure for the total costs, including the Valentines, flowers, entertainment, dining out, engagement rings, wedding (big one), and honeymoon, comes down to more than $40k. And they even have already missed the big ones of birthday presents!

So, I was jokingly telling my husband, he "owed" me quite a few things: There is the wedding (since we chose to have a quick civic ceremony), the engagement ring (since we went straight to the platinum wedding rings), honeymoon (since we never had time for one), flowers (since I had only had one dozen of red roses all these years).

Yes, I'm saying that to him jokingly, since I'm not sure why a lot of these are necessary. Girls and women are fed by the media, hyped-up commercials from corporations and merchants, and traditions that border on wastefulness. Sometimes, I wonder if girls are trained (aka brainwashed) to thinking that, by making guys jump through the hoops (border on torturing), it will demonstrate how much his love is for her. While I'm big on romance, I have serious doubts that material consumption is THE only way to show passion.

And I'm already a serious "step-up" from my parents, since during the post-WWII days, the only thing my dad had ever bought my mom during the courtship was a bottle of cough syrup.

I guess, in a way, most girls fancy a strong and loving husband, who would afford her all the creature comforts that she wants. There are lots of movies and TV shows reinforcing the myth/belief. While that would surely be nice, I'm not sure how much in reality it can play out in the love life of millions of girls. Those stupid "rules of thumb", like guys should be spending 2-1/2 months' worth of salary to buy the engagement ring, must certainly be coming from merchants like Tiffany and Cartier.

In this day and age, when most of the "festivities" are driven by commercial interests, like the gift-buying tradition of Christmas, or the flower/chocolate giving of Valentine's Day, serve no real purpose other than the vanities of girls.

I remember one of my girlfriends who used to get depressed when a Valentine's Day falls in the weekdays, since all the girls in her office would boost and ooo-ahhh'ing about how much flowers each girl was getting by their supposed boyfriends. She wasn't seriously seeing anyone at the time, thus there's no flower. And she would resort to buying herself flowers, in order to keep up the appearances. I find it so sad still, for her to fall for that kind of commercial "traps."