Don’t you love Valentine’s Day?

In response to last week’s Jewish Week column, “Checkbox Commitment,” I received this lovely letter from someone I’m rebranding as “a fan.”

Maybe another reason that so many of you folks are single in your 30s is your compulsion to discuss the intimate details of your relationships with your friends and your relatives. On more than one occasion, a girl did that to me and that usually sent me running the other way. It still angers me, why does what happen on a date become fodder for a discussion between a woman and her friends.

I met my wife via a personal ad in [location deleted]. To this day our friends know that, our families think we met via a mutual friend. I may be old-school, but I am not ancient.

I occasionally would be chided for keeping my private relationships private. I would simply reply that a gentleman does not kiss and tell and neither does a lady. Perhaps your crowd should follow that axiom. You may have a bit less to talk about, but maybe you’d screw up less relationships.

It’s the use of the term “screw up” that shows he really cares. But seriously, I don’t necessarily think he’s all wrong. As I wrote in my response to him, the communication in the relationship, especially starting out, is often so uncertain and confusing–and in some cases demoralizing–that the only way to survive is to ask friends for advice. But I do think that sometimes people take the private into the public too often.

What do you think?