Love in the time of cyberia

LOS ANGELES – The skies are already turning pink. Red, the color of passion, is most common. Heart, the shape of infatuation, is seen everywhere.

With exactly a week to go before Valentine’s Day, lovers organize a fête for their honey, sweetie or baby – romantic dinner dates, dreamy vacation plans and elaborate presents to profess their affection.

And so if you’re one of those crammers who are now agonizing over what to give your boyfriend/girlfriend or husband/wife on V-Day, here are some superstitions you may want to consider:

Fighting Over Control – "Make sure the very first gift you give to your partner is something that encloses," a friend once told me.

Think belt, necktie and necklace. Preferably something that wraps around the neck. This, she explained, will give you control over the other person in the relationship. This will enable you to hold him by the neck.

"Not so. In fact, it is bad luck," says Farrah Fonacier, account executive in a California-based advertising agency who’s been with her boyfriend for two years now.

She says she tries to avoid giving him such items because it is like "choking" him. "And that is destructive to any relationship."

The same concept applies to guys giving their girlfriends a bracelet.

Stepping On One’s Toes – Apparently, this is also the idea behind giving shoes as presents. According to some, giving another person a pair of footwear is like giving him/her the license to walk all over you. Another interpretation could be that whoever gives the shoes will be the one trampling upon the other. Whether the first or the second meaning is true, is beside the point. Superstitious folks simply stay away from shoe racks when shopping for their loved ones.

Keeping A Steady Supply – If shoes, slippers, socks, belts, necklaces and bracelets are out, what’s left on the list? Cologne may seem to be a good option. It makes your partner smell good all the time which, in turn, makes you happy. But do you want to be happy for a long time, possibly forever?

"I heard it’s not good to give cologne to your significant other," shares Robert Garcia, a sophomore at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, Calif.

The idea behind the superstition is: as the cologne gets used up, love between the couple likewise runs out.

Champee Villanueva, a student at the American Feng Shui Institute in Monterey Calif., explains that these superstitions came about because of the symbolisms that people connote with the objects.

"I used to simply accept superstitions and follow for fear that they might be true," she says. "But as I rationalized more, I simply became indifferent."

Killing The Passion – For most Chinese and Japanese, giving live pot plants is preferred over cut plants, no matter how beautifully they were arranged in a bouquet.

"The symbolical interpretation is quite obvious," says Maria Teresa Aggozino, head of the Folklore Archive at the University of California in Berkely. "There is no life in cut plants. After a while, it withers and dies."

Indeed! "Love makes the world go ‘round." And superstitions are not unique to Filipinos. Everywhere, throughout centuries, societies have been preoccupied with passion. Men have celebrated and scorned it; revered and repressed it; and worked on scores of customs and superstitions, hoping to contain it.

Some years ago in Kenya, men literally gave the finger. There was an old custom for a young fighting man to give his girlfriend a finger that was cut from his opponent’s hand. This was considered a love token that a girl wore in a string around her neck.

In Siberia, an ancient courtship custom called on young women to extract lice from their hair and flick them at men who caught their eyes.

The ancient German ritual of offering a ring on a sword’s tip as a man’s pledge of faithfulness to his girl must have given birth to the popular practice of man presenting his girl a diamond engagement ring to propose marriage.

These practices may be amusing and interesting but these don’t necessarily mean superstitions are true. Villanueva suggests that it’s up to the individual to believe in sayings and uphold superstitions or defy those that their parents and grandparents followed. She, however, suggests a good luck charm that has always been effective for her and her friends.

To Find And Keep A Good Relationship – Villanueva, who now has a one-year-old grandson, was introduced to the power of the rose quartz in Baguio. The old lady selling the amulet told her that aside from the beauty of the stone, it was also good for love and relationships. She was advised to wear it all the time. And according to her, it has always worked.

"But of course you can’t just rely on external stuff. Bottom-line is, we have to work on our relationships," she adds.

Everyone knows that matters of the heart are not so simple. Furthermore, this age beyond innocence makes finding love, keeping the passion and losing the game more complicated. And though scientific inventions have succeeded in adding perks and luxuries to life, the truths about love now in cyberia were the constant that ascertained relationships since Adam laid eyes on Eve: that romance isn’t (always) the happy-ever-after proposition we expect it to be; that though attainable, fairytale endings are elusive; that love is born in the shadow of loss and lives in a cycle marked by hurt and healing; that not everything the heart feels it wants the mind approves of; and that there are no fool-proof rules.