We’re here to make choosing a Valentine’s Day gift for the man in your life much easier. Valentine’s Day is a day for romance and women usually receive flowers and chocolates, but what about the men? We’ll help you get further than a card with a clichéd message to find a gift that is romantic and will be appreciated.
Keep it personal
Personalised valentines gifts for him work well, but make it personal in a different way, in that its personalised from you rather than for them. This means including a bit of you in the gift by creating a piece of art, write a song, knit a scarf and combine this with one of our other suggestions for an ultra-personalised gift.
It’s also about you
Research by the University of British Columbia and McGill University in Montreal, Canada found that most people buying gifts made choices based on the recipient’s personality and interests and most also said they preferred receiving gifts that others had chosen with them specifically in mind. What was a surprise from their experiments was that those who thought partly of themselves while buying a gift felt emotionally closer to the recipient than the group who were told to think only of the recipient. Therefore, the art of gift-giving to your boyfriend is to combine a gift that reflects your own personality as well as his.
Think laterally
Allow your thoughts to be creative and indirect when it comes to choosing the best Valentine’s gift for your boyfriend. Make a list of all the things he is interested in and things that define who he is. You list could read: loves wearing T-shirts, supports a particular sports team, likes listening to heavy metal. Brainstorm for two full minutes and write down as many things as you can think of. Then, brainstorm something to go with every item on that list, big or small. This will help you think of new ideas for gifts that you would never have thought of otherwise. If they’re all small, combine a few of them.
Make life easier
If you’re looking for something more practical, and that your man needs, trying to think of specific things can leave you blank, so instead consider what will make life easier. If he’s very busy with work, he may be short on time and there are lots of products to help him manage his life more efficiently. If he’s just started a new course, put together a survival kit. If you’re really stuck, look on their Amazon wish-list, e-bay search words or social media sites to see if they offer any clues.
For the cynic
If your boyfriend is someone that believes Valentine’s Day is just a day invented by card manufacturers to make money in the quietest retail month of the year, then you can still give a present. It’s probably a good idea to gift something that isn’t tied into the cheesy romance they don’t like, but you can still show your love by doing something for your loved one such as printing out and framing a great photo of him with his dog, or take him back to his youth with a game he used to love.
Convenience over desirability
It’s not true that the more desirable you think your gift is, the more your boyfriend will appreciate it. An expert on the psychology of judgement and decision-making at Yale University has found that receivers really value convenience, feasibility and ease of use in a gift. This means that a fabulous Tag Heuer dive watch may not be appreciated if he prefers something with fewer features.
It’s the same if your gift is a promise to take your boyfriend for dinner at the highly-rated Italian restaurant an hour from home sometime after Valentine’s Day. You may think this is a fabulous gift, which it is. Yet he may have preferred an invitation to eat at the less well rated restaurant ten minutes away, which means that you both end up a little disappointed.
So, keep the gift personal from you to him and it really is the thought that counts.
