It’s an age old thing. Likely, a cave man was the first to yank a flower from its stem and present it with a flourish to a passing female in hopes of luring her back to his den. And likely, this tradition will continue unabated for as long as there are both flowers and women to give them to.

But what is it about flowers that causes women, particularly, to want them so, especially when you consider how they grow in such abundance pretty much anywhere you look outside?

It’s because of two things; the first is because they see them as beautiful, delicate things, which women can identify with. The second is because women have come to identify receiving flowers as something special, whereby another person expresses their love, or at least their like for them.

There is just no getting around the fact that flowers are delicate. Their petals are thin, sometimes nearly translucent; they require gentle care to survive for more than a day or so. And even then, they don’t survive long. Their beauty is fleeting, not unlike that which women, especially in our modern society, feel almost every day. Flowers are beautiful and delicate, the things women want to be, at least sometimes. It shouldn’t be any wonder that women love flowers, whether in a vase on their dining room table, or alongside the road when driving to work. Flowers are something that no matter what, when you see them, they are just beautiful. There are no rumblings about how they might be better if this or that, or what might have done better. They just are what they are, like a sunset. Simply beautiful.

And this is why men have given women flowers; because they want the woman to have something they like, to impress her, and because they want to show her they see the association between the beautiful flower and the beautiful woman. In short, they want the woman in their sights to know that they like what they see and want to possess it, just as the woman possesses the flowers.

And so, because men have made flowers one of the most traditional ways of expressing their desire, women have come to see receiving those flowers as complimentary, and as an opportunity to encourage a suitor, or conversely, to do the opposite. Either way, because she has the flowers, the woman always wins.