Editor’s Note: Who is the wisest of them all? Who is more dedicated to your pleasure than anyone on earth? Who can help you when you’re going online for the first time to find love; or when your lover’s children hate you; or when you want to strangle your husband? Why, the Love Goddess, of course. She promises nothing less than celestial wisdom, heavenly sex, divine dating. Read on …

So I’m ready to roll — Brazil-waxed into a red heart shape, Goddess-ready (thank you for those amazing tips!), skin exfoliated. It’s my fifth date with a man I met online, and Valentine’s Day night, we both know, is THE night. Whose place should we go to for this, our first time?

Traditional wisdom says your place — on the theory that you’ll be in your own bed and in control of events. Traditional wisdom is wrong: It forgets that playing 24-hour hostess means all the comfort of a flight attendant on the red-eye. (Think: the clean-and-ironed sheets; the makeup piles at the sink; the tub; the dubious contents of the refrigerator … Then, there’s Bach or Bolero? “The Pink Panther” or “The Green Door”?)

No, darling Valentine, let him worry about the sheets, the munchies, the soft-rock or soft-porn. You be a gorgeous guest and bring a bottle of champagne — a woman ready for love, not the hyperactive owner of a bed and breakfast.

The most compelling reason for his place, though, is that you get to orchestrate your departure. At your place, you could face either a nascent feeling of abandonment (say he’s a runner and wants to hit the trail at the crack of dawn, or, equally awful, darts out for brunch with his ex-wife).

My guy hates Valentine’s Day. He says, and I quote, “It’s the most violently commercial assault on both genders since Christmas ceased to be a religious holiday,” and so forth. I LOVE Valentine’s Day, and dread the inevitable stand-off. What should I do?

Don’t put yourself or him through it. Who wants a forced show of love? He’ll sit there over your lovingly prepared dinner in his worst clothes, sullen as a teenage Bob Dylan. Go out to dinner with someone who adores the day and adores you and is game for this admittedly commercial holiday — a male friend, a woman friend, your mother — and let him stay in his cave and watch A-Rod on the sports news defending himself against drug use. And do not break down and get him a Valentine’s Day gift. Get your dinner buddy one instead — and a little something for yourself.

What IS Valentine’s Day? And isn’t it specifically a time for men to honor their loved ones?

Some contend Valentine’s Day was named after one of several early Christian martyrs named Valentine, celebrating the courtly love so popular at the time of Chaucer. Another theory is that the day was named after St. Valentine, whose lover rejected him — at which point he stabbed himself in the heart and sent it, still beating, to her as a guilt-inducing reminder of his suffering and adoration.

As for who should get whom a Valentine, certainly the implicit message of the holiday is that a man honors his love for a woman; but at this point, love notes sent by both is the popular (and lovely) gesture.

Last year I was out of town on Valentine’s Day and my lover neither called nor sent me a card. He knows how I feel about Valentine’s Day, and we had a fight over it. This year, I have to be out of town again. I’m nervous.

Remind him. Then, if he doesn’t call or doesn’t send a card, it’s neither carelessness nor mindlessness, and you’ll have to think carefully about the not-so-loving message he’s sending. Your job is to decide why he won’t honor its importance to you. Is it that he’s just busy and can’t believe that this “silly” holiday is so important? Or is he mad that you’re out of town? Or is he sending a hostile message that he also sends at other times, in other ways? If it’s the latter, my darling love child, then he’s starving you — and Valentine’s Day is merely the symbol of that deprivation. Need I say more?