Survey: Men Would Prefer to Have Sex on Valentine’s Day

Flowers, jewelry, chocolate, teddy bears — the conventional Valentine’s Day gifts have a decidedly feminine slant to them, but a new survey shows that men think they’re the ones really cleaning up when it comes to Valentine’s Day: Guys think their significant others will spend $230 on them, while women expect that their main squeezes will spend, on average, $196 on them. Both men and women who are in relationships expect an average of $240 will be spent on them.

According to the Chase Blueprint Valentine’s Day Survey, though, both genders might be a little overly optimistic when it comes to their expectations for Valentine’s Day. Women said they plan to spend an average of $27 less than the $98 guys say they’ll shell out — which means neither gender plans to spend nearly as much as they want to have spent on them.

Not into shelling out the big bucks? A new RetailMeNot.com survey hints at one way couples can avoid breaking the bank this Valentine’s Day: Two-thirds of men and 30% of women say they’d rather have sex than get a gift for the holiday. Chase found that 43% of men and about half as many women don’t want a Valentine’s Day gift.

Fewer people are celebrating Valentine’s Day this year by buying gifts. The National Retail Federation’s new survey of more than 6,4000 people finds that respondents celebrating the holiday plan to spend an average of just under $134, about three bucks more than last year, but the number of people planning to celebrate it this year has fallen — just 54% compared to 60% last year. RetailMeNot finds that almost 20% of people don’t plan to spend anything on their significant other for Valentine’s Day.

About 70% of the more than 1,200 respondents to the Chase survey say they’d rather be surprised than pick out their own present for Valentine’s Day. Gift recipients prefer chocolate over flowers, tech toys over jewelry and dinner out over a home-cooked meal, although RetailMeNot finds that the number of people who want to stay in for the evening has gone up 10 percentage points since last year. The NRF survey finds that more than a third of people will give flowers or take their significant other out for the evening, about half of people will give candy and around 20% plan to buy jewelry.

The NRF survey also looks at Valentine’s spending beyond what people get for their significant others: Almost 60% will get something for a family member, 22% get gifts for friends and almost 20% get Valentine’s Day presents for their pets.