It may be the flu season, but most of us are lovesick. Sorry, there is no immunization shot for the infatuation virus. And, maybe, no cure. Just ask San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom's therapist. He does have a psychotherapist, right?

The word "love" can mean anything from "like a lot" to "I will die for you." One anthropologist, Helen Fisher, divides romantic relationships into stages: lust, romantic love, and attachment. She can tell you all about research regarding neurotransmitters and hormones involved in attraction, infatuation, lust, and attachment. You can find most of that information by typing the words "the chemistry of love" into any major Internet search engine. What ever happened to "nurturing"? You know, caring for one another? To me, love is clearly not infatuation, lust, or attachment. It is much deeper.

Evolution or some other force has given human brains a huge data-processing area called the neocortex. Our enhanced thinking abilities allow us to "rise above" what are the more programmed biological responses of less brain-developed animals. Thus, for better or worse, we are uniquely equipped to experience conflicts between our thinking selves and our biology. Nowhere else do these conflicts arise more often than in the realm of "love." And, no holiday symbolizes these conflicts more than Valentine's Day.

Unlike Christmas and Easter, Valentine's Day is all about imperfect love. Christmas is about God's love. Easter is about God's love. But, Valentine's Day is about human love. Love found, love lost, love built, love burned, love scraped together, love spurned, love restored, love ruined, saved by love, mortally wounded by love. The list of experiences with "love" is endless. V-Day drives people nuts. Even normal people. That's because most people have suffered from love lost.

Around AD 1382, Chaucer wrote in his Parlement of Foules [Fowls] "For this was sent on Seynt Valentyne's day, Whan every foule [fowl] cometh ther to choose his mate." He had astutely noticed that birds in England and France would start pairing off and mating in the spring. The St. Valentine that Chaucer was likely referring to, however, was honored in May, not February. No matter. Due to Chaucer, the Feast of St. Valentine, originally established on February 14 by Pope Gelasius in AD 496, became associated with the mating of birds ("romance"), and the rest is history. Hallmark, Inc., the world's largest maker of greeting cards, has Chaucer to thank. It is the second biggest card-sending occasion, right behind Christmas.

I think we need to make Valentine's Day even more serious than it already is. We need a non-working day to celebrate, honor and get really earnest about love. At least, it should be a day on which free relationship therapy clinics would be available throughout the nation. We need this more than we need to venerate a bunch of dead presidents (and rampant consumerism) on February 18.

Is it that our interest in the meaning and manners of love isn't serious enough to warrant a true holiday? Or, maybe, is it the fact that men still control which holidays become the non-working ones? Think about it. Just how many heterosexual guys (or Congressmen) do you know who could handle such sentimentality for a whole day?

Nature is fighting nurture in my soul tonight.
They've been duking it out in my life since 1965.
I'd like to be babied, but I'd rather get laid.
I think I need a bottle of Love Potion 2007.

I heard it was made down in New Orleans,
Sometime after Katrina blew it to smithereens.
It's full of lessons learned and low on vice.
I got to find a bottle of Love Potion 2007.

The "old" brain in me makes me soon forget.
Tenderness is what I need to give and get.
Hormones confuse the meaning of that thing called love.
Nurturing is the secret of Love Potion 2007.

It's not like anything I've had before.
It won't make it easier for me to score.
The chicks will have to adjust to it,
The higher consciousness of Love Potion 2007.

The Third Millenium is already here.
Does sex still have us by the ear?
Or will caring become a popular trend?
We need a bunch of bottles of Love Potion 2007.

Feel free to sing the above lyrics to the tune of "Love Potion Number Nine," written and sung by The Searchers in 1964.

The current conventional wisdom is "Women give sex to get love. Men give love to get sex." Guys generally know more about lust than love. Women expect them to. So, they live "down" to women's expectations. Then women get disappointed. It is a time-tested truth: "you get what you expect."

Women generally know more about nurturing than do men. They have either grown a fetus, given birth to a child or they have contemplated it and all its meanings. It gives them an edge. Men, no matter how close they have been to the birthing process, are still handicapped. They haven't done it. They can't do it. In my opinion, this makes it harder for men to truly understand and exercise nurturing. So much more difficult, frankly, that men often find it is easier to just ignore it.

When business leaders were asked 15 years ago about how much parental leave time a man should take, the answer from 63 percent of them was "none." We don't know for sure if those attitudes have changed significantly since the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act because no recent reliable survey has been done in the United States. We know that a 2004 survey in the United Kingdom, where a paid paternity leave law had existed for over a year, showed that it was very underutilized. There is no statutory right to paid paternity leave in the United States.

No one disputes what constitutes nurturing. Everyone disputes what constitutes love. In my very humble opinion, "I love you" should mean "I will nurture you, care for you, be your haven from misunderstanding and your refuge from the insults of day-to-day life -- your sanctuary."

Want to get the Third Millennium moving towards a thoughtful evolution? Opt for tenderness the next time you get the chance. Your relationships and society will be better off for it. And, I bet, so might you.

-- Be kind and prosper, Dr. Sterling

      Comments? Questions? Need Help?

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* Footnote:

The following links are to cartoons that graphically illustrate at least two of the issues targeted in this article: (1) Paternity Leave Underutilization from The New Yorker magazine; (2) Nurture Fighting Nature from Cagle.com.

Sterling Manners is written by Ron Sterling, M.D., an award-winning writer and psychiatrist. "Sterling" stands for "excellent, superior, and honorable." You may e-mail Dr. Sterling with your questions and thoughts about respect, honor, integrity, civility, courtesy, ethics, etiquette, manners and, of course, men.

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