It’s nearing the middle of frigid February yet the flop sweat of panic soaks your flesh.

You’ve been dating a fine lass for six weeks now and, according to the rules of romance, you owe her a Valentine’s Day gift. And not just any Valentine’s gift; it has to be something that sets you apart from all other men. It has to be perfect because when she’s at work or among friends, your new lady will be assessing your V-Day behavior and comparing it to that of other men — in particular, the boyfriends of her closest pals.

Intense, right?

Right. The pressure of your first Valentine’s Day together is enormous, so much so that you ought to at least give some thought to breaking up with your girl until, say, mid-March when it’s safe. The only holiday to worry about in March is St. Patrick’s Day, and you can stay drunk for that one.

The fact is, I have known guys — cads, the lot of them — who have ended perfectly good relationships simply because the pressure of Valentine’s Day was too much to bear. This isn’t grade school where all you have to do is buy a big box of cheap greeting cards for your classmates. In grade school, a boy showed his affection for a particular girl by giving her a real card, something with puppies on it, and maybe, if she was really awesome, a box of Lifesavers. Not to mention one of those candy hearts with a bold message on it: “Be Mine,” perhaps, or, “I’m Yours.”

In the grown-up world of courtship, that kind of behavior will get you dumped quicker than a recurring cold sore. Worse, it will tear your studly reputation to tatters and it’s back to eHarmony with your sorry butt. You have to conduct your Valentine’s Day strategy like a war general or a presidential candidate because, brother, public opinion matters.

I know what you’re thinking: but Mike. All I have to do is send a dozen roses to her office and I’m golden. A dozen roses is like Cupid’s arrow fired out of a bazooka, am I right?

No, fool. You’re not right. Because this floral fantasy of yours is one that will also be seized by 10 other desperate men, who also have girlfriends or wives working in that particular office. Your girl might initially be thrilled with that bouquet of roses, but then Tia, that uppity wench in the next cubicle, is going to receive the same thing. Then Amber-Lynn will get her roses followed by Misty, Gretta, Makayla, Jasmine, Julia and that horrible Sophie over by the fax machine.

The math alone will kill you — the value of your girl’s roses are vastly diminished by every other rose to arrive in the general vicinity, an algebraic formula expressed as R=Tx5 cubed by people who don’t know anything about algebra.

As a Valentine’s Day Hail Mary, roses sent to the office just sucks. So do chocolates in a heart-shaped box, even if they’re the most expensive chocolates you could find during an exhausting 10-minute search on the Internet. The main problem with flowers and chocolate is the LACK OF ORIGINALITY, a term that should send you into convulsions of terror because once you earn that label, even the lonely, faceless people of eHarmony will reject you.

You have GOT to be original, there is just no way around it. I’m not talking about skywriting or professing your love over the Teletron at a Pirates game in Portland. If you considered the Teletron idea for even a second, you must begin self-flagellating* at once. The Teletron idea was overcooked in 1993. It’s not original and therefore, will likely cause your beloved to flee your presence in tears.

*Now that I think of it, self-flagellation might be an original way to express your love, provided you involve something ultra romantic, like whips made from locks of her hair. Give this a try and report back to me.

Jewelry? That might work if you had even a single atom-sized clue about it. Go blindly into jewelry shopping and you’ll no doubt commit some grand faux pas, such as buying gold when clearly your girl is a platinum, or presenting her with a ring that is actually a nose bead. It happens.

You could buy something shiny and expensive and have it engraved, but when you commit to that, you have to come up with the perfect message, which only compounds your problem. Whatever you do, don’t shoot for honesty when paying a buck a letter for engraving: I HOPE WE CAN KEEP DOING IT UNTIL BASEBALL SEASON won’t only get you dumped, it will get you banned from even the low-level dating sites, like Barnyard Mingle.

There’s always the option of symbolic as a means of stomping through the quicksand of Valentine’s Day. You could spend a couple hundred bucks and have a star named in your girl’s honor, for example. Just don’t cheap out and purchase one of the crappy stars that’s only visible every other leap year. And if you do go this route, make sure to come up with (steal from somebody on the Internet) some soaring sentiment to go with it. “I bought you this star because to me, you gleam brighter than all the other, blah blah blah center of my universe blah blah something.”

My bet is that the star route won’t work. When her friends ask what you got her for the most romantic holiday of all, your lady is going to point feebly toward the sky, but since she’ll be in the office at the time, she’ll actually be pointing to a nasty water stain on a ceiling tile. Talk about symbolism.

As one who hasn’t had to bother with Valentine’s Day for decades, I’m going to give you a valuable suggestion. I want you to write it down on the envelope of that stupid card you were planning to send to your dearest darling. My suggestion? Go philosophical and denounce the stupid holiday as being unworthy of your love.

“My darling,” you might say. Getting down on one knee is optional. “I worship you every single minute of every single day. A silly point on a calendar cannot contain the magnitude of our gargantuan* love. I hereby forsake the very concept of Valentine’s Day as a blah blah blah** something romantic blah.”

*Any time you get a chance to use ‘gargantuan’ in a romantic setting, by golly, you do it.

**Don’t actually say ‘blah blah blah.’ 

This just might work for you, thereby freeing you from the commercial trappings of this manufactured holiday for the duration of this particular relationship.

Or it might fail dramatically and she’ll see you for the unoriginal cheapskate you are. Hey, whatever, am I right?

It’s almost baseball season.

Mark LaFlamme is a Sun Journal staff writer. If you think he should write a romantic advice column* email him at mlaflamme@sunjournal.com. *Ha! not gonna happen.