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He sends you flowers. He sends a card. He sends you lacy bits of lingerie. He might even be a bauble-buyer.

The guy is a valentine genius.

Giving you the royal romantic treatment is easy. What's far more difficult is for him to leave his wife.

Consider this a primer for how to deal with the man who says he loves you, but cannot bring himself to follow through on his promises that you are the woman he wants to be with forever.

I know: Married women have affairs, and often they too are reluctant to leave their marriages. We only have to remember the sad murder trial last year in which Richard Wills was convicted of killing his long-time mistress, Lavinia (Linda) Mariani.

Reportedly, he was frustrated over her reluctance to leave her husband.

But since it's Valentine's Day - the day of the great romantic gesture, which women in particular not only expect, but thrive on - the affair with the married man is the focus du jour.

And this is what you need to know. By sighing in delight over your married lover's Valentine's Day show of affection, you are participating in your own deception. You are a hope addict. And he knows it.

Many women indulge in wishful thinking rather than critical thinking in their relationships, especially in the case of the married man. They make excuses for his behaviour. They concentrate on the positive. "He's worried about walking out on his children, because he's such a good dad," women in affairs might say. "He wants to make sure his wife will be okay. He says she is fragile, so he needs to break the news to her at the right time," Other Women report. "As soon as the children are in university, he says he will leave," is another affair-enabling statement I've heard.

But when you're having an affair with a married man, such warm and fuzzy romantic thinking is the last thing you need.

Women don't just fall in love, they fall prey to the romantic gesture. Be honest. Think of all the times you have thought, "He must really love me. Look at what he got for me," only to be disappointed by the relationship at a later time.

What you need is a knock on the head.

First, address why you're in such a relationship.

"Often [married] men involved in affairs get portrayed as Lotharios, but it's really a folie à deux. There are two people involved, who are making a choice to be in a relationship that is not fully committed and not fully intimate," says Gregory Hamovitch, a Toronto psychologist.

It's true there are women who profess not to care if their man leaves his wife. "I figure I'm doing their wives a favour," said a midlife divorced woman I know, who openly talked about the affairs she had had over the past decade with various Bay Street executives in Toronto. "These guys are going to have affairs anyway. At least I don't ask them for anything," she said.

But I would suggest that's an unhealthy display of defensiveness and self-degradation, and it points to the problem that many psychologists say underlies the reason single women settle for a part-time man. It's that old bugaboo: low self-esteem.

Which may also explain the attraction many women have to the high drama of thinking that he will leave her for you. It's a subconscious overcompensation for not believing you are worthy of someone's full and loving attention. Somewhere in your psyche, you think: "If I get him to leave for me, I must be truly valuable."

Women yearn for such cataclysmic romantic scripts.

Recently, I told a female acquaintance that I have a friend who is a priest. Occasionally, I invite him to events. He is interesting and literary.

"Wouldn't that be amazing if he gave up the church for you?" she sighed.

No, I said. He's a friend.

This desire for high-stakes love with an otherwise committed man is often exacerbated by divorce, when newly single - and several-years single - women may feel unlovable and are therefore willing to settle for whatever they can get.

Here's one way to see things clearly. Think of yourself as a Ferrari in a garage that you are offering to him to use any time he wants. You fill it up with gas. You keep it clean, finely detailed for his pleasure. That's how male commentator Michael Coogan explains how men in affairs would view the situation.

The co-author of Know Your Pig, a funny book about how to understand men in relationships, is not the first to point out that the only way to judge how a man feels is by his actions, not by his words. "An affair is all about convenience for him. And a man will tell a woman anything she wants to hear, especially in a non-integrity situation like an affair," he says.

Dr. Hamovitch adds some further understanding. "Some of the reasons men stay in a marriage is that they have some intimacy in the form of shared experience and companionship with their wives, and if their reason for being in an external relationship is for the sex, then they're not going to leave their marriages. That's not enough." In other words, you may be confusing sex with love, a delusion that he may be encouraging, unwittingly or not.

So if you want to find out how he really feels, draw some boundaries. Put away the keys to that Ferrari. Say that you love him, that you have had a great time, but that you need to see some action if the relationship is going to continue. Give him a deadline: say, two months.

Consider it an act of generosity. You're giving him the time he needs, without you, to really think through his situation and what he wants. And if, by then, he doesn't make the move out of his marital home, throw your hope out the window.

The best advice, however, is the pre-emptive kind. Channel Barbara Amiel: When she was between husband No. 3 (David Graham) and husband No. 4 (Conrad Black), she was in London, moving among the great and the good. There were plenty of men, but she knew what she wanted and what she deserved.

Her best line? "I don't do married men."

shampson@globeandmail.com