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" Call me the Grinch Who Stole Romance, but I find stereotypical romantic gestures expensive and messy and downright corny. I&amp;#039;m lucky I found my wife, because she feels the exact same way. It&amp;#039;s not that we don&amp;#039;t try \u2014 it&amp;#039;s just that for every gauzy high school fantasy we embark on, there always seems to be a back end that no one ever warned us about. I tried sprinkling rose petals all over our bedroom once. You know what I learned? Someone has to clean them up after the lovin&amp;#039;. Nothing feels less romantic than scrabbling around on your hands and knees, half naked, trying to collect what suddenly amounts to nothing more than compost. Let me ask: Do you and your partner share a special song because you heard it at an important moment in your relationship? Yeah, Karel and I don&amp;#039;t have one of those. The closest we come to sharing a song is &amp;quot;Mississippi Queen&amp;quot; by Mountain. It was the first song we heard after eloping to a small city in upstate New York. (And before you begin to argue that eloping sounds romantic, I should stop to point out that this same city recently received a lot of press for having the worst gang-violence problem and urban blight in the state. C&amp;#039;est l&amp;#039;amour.) Anyway, I&amp;#039;m not sure if you&amp;#039;re familiar with &amp;quot;Mississippi Queen&amp;quot; specifically, or Mountain&amp;#039;s oeuvre in general, but it&amp;#039;s not exactly Peter Cetera and Cher. And yet that will be the song we need to figure out how to dance to at our 50th anniversary. I guess it will all work out in the end, because we step on each other&amp;#039;s feet when we dance anyway. Even something as simple as going out for a romantic dinner together often ends in bad. Our last date night was supposed to be special. It was our eighth anniversary. We hadn&amp;#039;t been out as a couple in months. We got dressed up, left the kids with my mom, and headed out to an old-school seafood house that had come highly recommended by someone who apparently didn&amp;#039;t like us very much. It turns out that old was the operative word at this establishment. It smelled like old seafood, very old seafood. The few dishes that passed us on their way to nervous-looking diners didn&amp;#039;t look that fresh either, and just so our romantic evening was perfect, the owner/host ended up getting into a heated shouting match with the couple waiting for a table in front of us (perhaps they had mentioned the smell). We beat a hasty retreat once the shoving and pushing started. Starving, and now smelling like fish, we ended up eating pizza on a street corner in our fancy clothes. We were back home in time to read our kids the last story before bedtime. All the traditional romantic go-to&amp;#039;s end up the exact same way: Jewelry is a bust because after eight years of marriage, I still don&amp;#039;t know what Karel likes (perhaps because she still does not know what kind of jewelry she likes, and her moods tend to change with her hair color), and we both agree that we would rather get the hole in the kitchen ceiling fixed before I even begin considering a sparkly purchase, especially if it&amp;#039;s going to be the wrong something sparkly. Chocolates work for me, but not in a romantic way. More of an I-will-eat-an-entire-box-of-chocolates-then-feel-sick-to-my-stomach-and-roll-around-on-the-floor-groaning-about-how-I-ate-too-many-chocolates sort of way. Karel doesn&amp;#039;t like to bring candy into the house for this reason. Neither of us sing, or play the guitar, or write poetry, so thankfully we don&amp;#039;t have to try to make the lover&amp;#039;s leap off that embarrassing bridge. I sometimes rap 2 Live Crew lyrics to her to make her laugh, but I don&amp;#039;t think that counts as conventional romance. So what does work for us? Karel and I keep our gestures simple and secretive: letting the other sleep in on Saturday, crawling into bed together before we&amp;#039;re tired so that we have a chance to catch up, or even something as small as remembering to bring the other person a glass of water before we get comfortable on the couch. For me, a special occasion is Karel in a lacy bra, and for Karel it&amp;#039;s coming home to a finely vacuumed first floor. Those are the extras we crave, the things that say, &amp;quot;I was thinking about you today.&amp;quot; The truth is, Karel and I kinda like eating pizza on the corner in our modest finery, we are in total agreement about how and where our money is best spent, &amp;quot;Mississippi Queen&amp;quot; is a pretty good rock song even if it does make for a crappy anniversary ballad, and finding a rose petal stuck to my butt three days after the fact was a teaching moment for everyone involved. When it comes to showing my affection, all I can really do is remember to tell my wife I love her every day, hold her hand on our evening walks with the kids, and cherish the moments when we fall asleep laughing together. If I can get the little stuff right, maybe that&amp;#039;s the most romantic act of all. REDBOOK columnist Aaron Traister lives in Philadelphia with his wife and two kids. His work has appeared on babble.com and salon.com. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/love-sex/relationships/advice/a6374/guys-romance/?link=emb&dom=yah_life&src=syn&con=blog_redbook&mag=rbk>