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" On this Valentine&amp;#039;s Day, I want to pay tribute to one of the great poets of love. I speak not of Shakespeare or Neruda or Robert Plant. I speak of Charles Darwin.  Back in 1838, when Darwin was considering proposing marriage (to his cousin, by the way), he didn&amp;#039;t rush in. He did what a rational Victorian gentleman might do: He wrote a pro-con list.  He scribbled down the benefits of remaining single, which included, among other things:  \u2022 &amp;quot;Not forced to visit relatives, &amp;amp;amp; to bend in every trifle.&amp;quot; \u2022 &amp;quot;Conversation of clever men at clubs&amp;quot;  \u2022 &amp;quot;Choice of Society &amp;amp;amp; little of it&amp;quot;  \u2022 &amp;quot;Freedom to go where one liked&amp;quot;  \u2022 [The avoidance of] &amp;quot;the expense &amp;amp;amp; anxiety of children&amp;quot; On that same piece of paper, he wrote of the rewards of marriage:  \u2022 &amp;quot;Constant companion, (&amp;amp;amp; friend in old age) who will feel interested in one&amp;quot; \u2022 &amp;quot;Object to be beloved &amp;amp;amp; played with&amp;quot;  \u2022 &amp;quot;Better than a dog anyhow&amp;quot;  \u2022 &amp;quot;Home, &amp;amp;amp; someone to take care of house&amp;quot;  \u2022 &amp;quot;Charms of music &amp;amp;amp; female chit-chat&amp;quot;  In the end, Darwin did choose marriage and female chit-chat, even though it meant less time with his bros, aka the clever men at clubs. He proposed to his first cousin, Emma Wedgwood, instead of buying a dog. It&amp;#039;s a sweet story. He had concluded, as he put it, &amp;quot;Marriage, marriage, marriage, QED... It is intolerable to think of spending one&amp;#039;s whole life, like a neuter bee, working, working.&amp;quot;  Darwin&amp;#039;s list may seem absurd, like something John Cleese would do in a sketch mocking repressed British bluebloods, but to me it&amp;#039;s poetry. We could use a little more cost-benefit thinking in our romance.  Both my wife and I have long been Valentine&amp;#039;s Day Grinches. We agree that it&amp;#039;s a wildly unfair holiday created by and for America&amp;#039;s smuggest. My wife and I each built up resentment to the annual glorification of couplehood during our many long years of singlehood.  Research shows people in loving relationships are generally happier and tend to live longer. Do they really need their own day? It&amp;#039;s like if they had a holiday to celebrate rich people or pretty people or healthy people. Dejected and lonely? Sorry. Move along.  One option: We could replace Valentine&amp;#039;s Day with Single Happy People Day. Like how Berkeley replaced Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day. But that&amp;#039;s just condescending. Another option: Keep Valentine&amp;#039;s Day, but make it more realistic. Take inspiration from Charles Darwin. Acknowledge that love can be wonderful and sublime, but it can also be destructive and deadly, a gateway to all sorts of horrors like stabbings, alimony, lies, and relationships with Chris Brown.  Stop romanticizing romance. For next year, I&amp;#039;m considering starting a Kickstarter campaign to create a more rational and balanced line of Valentine&amp;#039;s Day products.  Some ideas, off the top of my head:  Candy Hearts would be mixed equally with Candy Frontal Cortices.  The cards would contain sweet little notes like: &amp;quot;The benefits of being married to you outweigh the costs.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;I love you very much, but not unconditionally. If you start a Ponzi scheme or build an underground bunker, I will probably stop loving you. But as of now, in your current state, I love you very much.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;I will always be true to you, because having an affair sounds exhausting.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;I am comfortable with you.&amp;quot; Please contact me if you want to invest.  By the way, Charles Darwin had an exceedingly happy marriage, by all accounts, and had ten children. On his deathbed, he told Emma, &amp;quot;Remember what a good wife you have been.&amp;quot; Shakespeare, the king of romantic love, the author of passionate sonnets, had what seems to be a pretty crappy marriage, living apart from his wife most of his adult life. On his deathbed, he pulled an apparently bizarre passive-aggressive move and left her only his &amp;quot;second-best bed.&amp;quot; So you tell me who is a better Valentine&amp;#039;s Day role model.  Follow The Culture Blog on RSS and on Twitter at @ESQCulture. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/sex/a19446/charles-darwin-how-to-fix-valentines-day-15093861/?src=soc_fcbk>