I have a theory.

Women experience love by doing; Men experience love by feeling.

So when I feel completely unloved and rejected because someone doesn't do something for me that I'd try to do for them, it's all mistranslation.

And this could be evolutionary. Men, to most efficiently propagate the species, would have to feel sufficient sexual attraction for a partner to facilitate intercourse, sufficient attachment to her to repeat the act over enough time to conceive a viable pregnancy, and sufficient protectiveness of her to keep buzzards, tigers, and dinosaurs away during the slow, loagy, third trimester. And that's it. If they just do what their emotions make them feel like doing, they're set. Their genes live on.

Women, to efficiently propagate the species, must do things. They've got to keep horrible screaming things alive, in the face of the same tigers and dinosaurs. They've got to feed horrible screaming things. They've got to haul shit and gather shit and maintain the cave. If women don't do things they wouldn't otherwise do, their genes didn't get passed on.

Which explains why we have so much cultural pressure on men to jump through hoops on gifting occasions. It's an attempt to rewrite the evolutionary script. It's retraining. It's an attempt to reconcile the sexes. Unfortunately, there's no profit in telling women that men can love deeply and truly without jumping through hoops; and less profit in telling men that instead of buying things for women, they could figure out ways to make their lives easier, and they'll be twice as happy. So instead we have absurd diamond commercials, 100% valentine's day markups on roses, and a heterosexual romantic culture based on buying.

Buying, by the way, is no real compromise between feeling and doing. It cheats both sides. Current theories of romance insist that thinking+buying=romantic gesture, but there is no substitute for doing or feeling, respectively.

So it's not anybody's fault that I'm feeling like absolute shit right now. It's the dilemma of non-equivalent acts.