VALENTINE?S Day, it is said, is for the spouse while the day after is for the other one, the lover who followed in her wake. There is a similar unspoken rule about Christmas and the day after.

For a change, I?m going write about the other Valentine, given that there are so many of them. They are sometimes described as The Other Woman, the mistress, kabit, kulasisi, kalaguyo, querida, and so on.

The usual explanation for taking a mistress is that this is part of machismo. At family reunions, coffee breaks, or even at funerals when unexpected guests drop in, the discovery that there?s another woman, if not another family, brings resigned responses: ?Men will be men. They?re unfaithful by nature.?

And while the unfaithful male is accepted, sometimes even admired, the other woman invites scorn and condemnation. The term kulasisi captures it all, the kulasisi being a colorful parrot. The human kulasisi evokes images of a woman in colorful make-up and clothes, out to lead otherwise upright men astray. Rather unfairly, society stigmatizes the kulasisi and her children as home-wreckers.

There are other more neutral terms like kalaguyo, which simply means a paramour. Then there?s querida, a term that is often spat out with contempt, many Filipinos being unaware that the term means ?the loved one? in Spanish.

How did that happen?

Throughout history, and across many cultures, marriage was mainly an upper-class institution for economic and political alliances. You married the one your parents chose for you, not the one you loved. Later in life, a man would find someone he could really love, sometimes even the one he had to forsake because of family pressure. She would be la querida, the loved one.

The rise of liberalism in the western world gave greater autonomy to individuals, including the ability to choose whom you wanted to marry. But throughout much of the non-western world, arranged marriages remained the practice.

In 21st century Philippines, even with romantic love now the norm, parents still play an important role in determining who you can marry. The degree of parental authoritarianism varies, and is strongest among Filipino Muslims where arranged marriages still frequently occur. Many Chinese-Filipino parents continue to be quite intrusive as well in match-making and influencing their children?s final decision on marriage.

More insights into marriages in the Philippines can be derived from a book first published about 15 years ago, with the delightful title ?Luto ng Diyos,? the Tagalog slang for sex. The book is actually a compilation of interviews with Filipino married couples from different parts of the country, edited by UP psychology professor Grace Aguiling-Dalisay and her colleagues.

Many of the couples? stories show how parents did indeed push for a particular marriage. This would usually be the young girl?s parents, who believed that the neighbor?s son can give economic stability not just to their daughter, but the family as well. In other cases there were shotgun marriages: a young girl just happened to stay out late with a boyfriend, so to avoid gossip, both of them are marched off to a priest or judge for their marital vows.

Parental pressures aside, the stories also often showed very brief courtships. Marriage seems almost over-romanticized, with young couples falling in love and thinking that marriage can lift them out of the misery of poverty.

Between marriages marked by an absence of love from the beginning, and marriages that began on nothing except intense passionate love that all too quickly flickered and died, it shouldn?t be surprising that so many people ? men and women ? become vulnerable to extramarital temptations.

That?s not all. The absence of divorce, and the fairly tedious and expensive process of getting an annulment, traps many Filipinos in loveless marriages. As if all that were not enough, we have the millions of Filipinos having to leave a spouse behind to work overseas. The odds for extramarital alliances build up both for those who leave, and those left behind. And with a spouse overseas, who has to wait for the day after Valentine?s?

No doubt, machismo further fuels the chances of a querida. Many of our women are caught, too, in loveless marriages, but will not be as willing to take on a paramour, notwithstanding the stories of Dancing Instructors (DIs).

It?s too easy to blame male chauvinism, or a lack of morals, for the querida institution. If we do value the institution of marriage, then we have to become more careful and serious in our choices of a marriage partner, and society will have to develop more options for dealing with marriages where love, notwithstanding the Valentine rituals, has long died. ?

?Luto ng Diyos? has been translated into ?A Feast from God? by the Southeast Asian Consortium on Gender and Sexuality and is available from UP Diliman, call 426-3801.