How to Show Your Date You Understand Her

Cost: $0 (assuming your date already owns a Jane Austen film)
Preparation Time: none

Would you like to show your date you like her?  That you respect her? Nay, that you LOVE her? 
Then you must do something truly terrible.  Something, dear reader, that will shock you to the core of your manliest manhood.  It will be frugal, of course, at least in the monetary sense; some would argue that this incredible gesture of everlasting love you are about to make will cost you your sanity (however, the author does not attempt to assist in matters of mental health, but solely those of the pocketbook).

What must you do, intrepid man of the dating type? What dreadful task must you undertake? How do you wow your woman?

Watch a Jane Austen film with your sweetheart.

Yes, the entire thing.

Really.

I know.  To you, a Jane Austen film is nothing more than the purest form of psychological torture: between two and six hours of women wearing ridiculous dresses weeping and sighing and discussing relationships, not to mention the subservient tailcoat-wearing fops that the ridiculous-dress-wearing women love (or hate, alternating several times during the course of the film).  If something like this were going down in real life, you would be smart enough to hightail it before the estrogen in the room caused mass hysteria.  Or retinal bleeding. Most heterosexual men would rather be forced to submit to Chinese water torture, or an entire Celine Dion CD, or an afternoon of scrapbooking, than actually have to watch Pride and Prejudice (even the two-hour version with Keira Knightly's bosoms to lessen the pain).  But here's why you should do it.

Women love Jane Austen films for many reasons, but one of the most important is their cathartic effect.  When a women watches Sense and Sensibility, for example, she immediately identifies herself with one of the principal characters, Marianne or Elinor, and as the film unfolds she experiences their emotional ups and downs with them.  Women think about the relationships in their lives, whether with family members or friends or enemies, a great deal.  Sometimes, these relationships are stressful, albeit beneficial, but women (being women) can't just duke it out in a fist fight to clear the air.  Instead, they seethe.  And watching a Jane Austen film, in which someone ELSE'S relationships come to a positive resolution, can be almost as good (at least for a little while) as having their OWN relationships work out. Life can often be an emotional whirlwind for a woman, and compressing all that emotion into a few hours of Regency period drama is very relaxing and allows pent-up frustrations to diminish.

"Can't she just watch that crap with her friends?" you ask.

Well, yes.  She can.  But when you watch a Jane Austen film with her, you are essentially saying, "Even though I don't understand all of the emotions that you go through, and even though I hate Hugh Grant, and his absurdly flowing hair, and his ridiculous confused expression, I am willing to work to understand and love you, just as those silly tailcoat-wearing fops try to understand their womenfolk."

You may be tempted to sigh loudly or tear your hair out by the fistfuls.  But just remember: a little Jane Austen goes a long way.  Having seen Persuasion once, you will probably not be forced to watch it again.  Your date will love you, and feel, somehow, that you understand her a little better than you did before.  Feel comforted, brave soul, in this knowledge:

Eventually Man Movie Night will come (think Iron Man 2, or Speed Racer), and then the tables will be turned.

(Note: the only acceptable answer to, "Don't you just LOVE Mr. Darcy?" is "Yes.  Yes, I do.")