Valentine’s Day. The day looms over us. Some people welcome its approach with sheer joy, while others cower in fear of the most love-struck day of the year.

For the majority of my life, I have been part of the latter group, my days of Valentine spent clothed in a cold running shower with the lights off, listening to The Cure while crying incessantly. This year, I have vowed to leave the past behind and enjoy this romantic day.

Valentine’s Day — the Holy Grail of Hallmark holidays. Love-flustered fists flying to stocked shelves gripping every card, chocolate box and stuffed bear to impress a certain sweetheart.

Dear readers, it is my personal mission this year to prevent you from being a lonely sucker on Valentine’s Day as I have often been, while at the same time not walloping your wallet to show your honeybear you care. It’s the Valentines Day survival guide.

This may come off a lot like The Zombie Survival Guide, but aren’t love and fighting off hoards of the undead strikingly similar? Success at either can be glorious, while failure is sure to eat away at your brain, and eventually kill you.

The first step to getting your girlfriend/wife/dog to love you is to get her a gift that shows her you care.

So do not buy her any chocolates, flowers, cupid-emblazened sweatpants, girdles or the like. It’s a rookie mistake. She will know you walked into a CVS 20 minutes ago and bought the first thing you saw that cost less than five dollars, pocket lint and a button combined.

More advice: A nice glass of wine or Jack Daniels should help to set the mood and have her wanting you. Be aware that the effects of the alcohol may also drive her toward inappropriate feelings for your neighbor or roommate though, so avoid every other human being during a state of impaired vision.

The truest way to her heart is to do something special for her, not shower her in crummy gifts. I suggest here the most effective thing is to find someone from her past that hurt her, and pummel them senselessly.

Perhaps on a separate evening she burst into tears about her ex-boyfriend who ignored her needs and instead played his XBox.

It is much more romantic to say, “Look, honey, I Facebook-stalked so-and-so you used to date three years ago and caught him walking to his car after work and beat him up with a tire iron!” Bring proof in the form of Polaroids, ragged T-shirt or blood sample. Ah, true love.

If these avenues fail to lead to love, time is wearing thin to woo the woman of your dreams (or the first girl you happened to see on campus that day). Whatever the situation is, you are in peril and must pull out quickly.

You must pin the blame on her. Use your common knowledge and wit to turn any argument she has about not having gifts or her repressed ex-boyfriend memories and turn it against her in any way possible.

If she says, “You didn’t even send me any flowers,” or “So-and-so is going to think that I made you do that to him,” your reply should always be, “this kind of thing does not seem like it is my problem.”

So good luck to you all on your Valentine’s excursions. If all else fails, you can come join me in the showers of the men’s locker room. Bring extra cookie dough and a copy of “Boys Don’t Cry;” mine suffered irreversible water damage last year.