LOVE ME TENDER?

At a card shop in the Mission Viejo Mall, two women in their 20s stand giggling before a display of valentines.

“I keep picking up all of the sex ones. These are the perverted cards down here,” the blonde says. “Do you think I should give this one to Ted?”

She flips open a card that reads, “The first time ever I saw your face, I thought, ‘Oh well, maybe he’s got a nice personality.’ ”

Those playing Cupid this Valentine’s Day should choose their cards with care. Valentines can reveal more about the sender than the intended target of such sharp arrows.

“When you pick a valentine, does it express who you are? I think it does,” says David Coombs, a marriage and family counselor in Tustin who conducts seminars on “The Essentials of a Successful Marriage” at Irvine Valley College.

“Valentines may make you more transparent than you think,” Coombs says.

Choose a funny valentine, and you might be standoffish, afraid of intimacy or commitment, he says. Choose a sarcastic valentine, and you may be venting hidden hostilities. Choose a sentimental card, and you are probably in touch with your emotions and more likely to risk rejection.

“When people choose a valentine, they have a particular image of themselves they want to convey,” says Bob Fulkerson, a clinical psychologist in private practice in Huntington Beach. “The cards can show how well they like themselves and their outlook on life.”

A humorous card might get a laugh, for instance, but beneath the surface the sender may be trying to boost his sagging self-esteem.

“They’re making fun at somebody else’s expense,” Fulkerson says.

Compared to today’s cards, antique valentines drip with tender sentiments. The frilly lace concoctions are a far cry from modern ones, and the differences illustrate the radical changes that have taken place in society.

Valentine’s Day actually began in the year 270 when a young Roman priest named Valentinus was sentenced to die by Emperor Claudius II for refusing to renounce his Christian beliefs.

Legend has it that while in jail, Valentinus helped restore the sight of his jailer’s 11-year-old daughter. The day of his execution, Feb. 14, he plucked a heart-shaped leaf from a clump of violets outside his jail window and pierced it with a note for the girl, signing it “From Your Valentine.”

Some believe that the first paper valentine was made in 1415 by Charles, Duke of Orleans, while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London. The card can be seen in the British Museum.

The earliest cards were printed in black and white and sometimes painted by hand. In the 1800s, Winslow Homer and scores of famous artists moonlighted by painting valentines. During the golden age of lacy valentines--1840 through 1860--cards were fashioned from delicate sheets of lace paper. Some featured exquisite patterns copied from lace tablecloths. A few had 14-karat gold or silver painted on their lace edges.

In the 1850s, an American named Esther Howland began making elaborate valentines using the fancy lace paper her father imported to the U.S. from England. She set up an assembly line of girls who would cut, glue, paint and assemble the cards.

Today, Howland’s valentines, identified by a red H on the back, remain coveted items among collectors.

By the early 1900s, card companies were making valentines with intricate dye work, embossing and gilding. Many still think of the era’s ornate Victorian-style floral cards as the epitome of sweet, old-fashioned valentines.

Early valentines were very serious. Young men sent them to ladies to propose marriage. Wedding rings figure prominently on many antique valentines. Often, a suitor would spend the winter painting a romantic picture on a lacy sheet of paper and inscribing it with a verse.

“He made the whole thing by hand and slipped it under her door in hopes she would say yes,” says Evalene Pulati, president of the National Valentines Collectors Assn. in Santa Ana. “You didn’t spend all winter working on a valentine for just anybody.”

She has a valentine from 1855 that a young man had decorated with two roses--a red rose for love and a white rose for marriage.

“I have three from him. It took him about three years to get her,” she says.

In those days, men were less afraid to wear their hearts on their sleeves.

“Oft as thy memory has traced each happy hour I’ve passed with thee, whate’er the time or where’er the place, oh think of me!” begs the suitor.

Thanks to the shrewd marketing strategies of card companies, valentines are no longer sent just by men. In 1990, one can find valentines for live-in lovers, mothers and stepfathers, fathers and stepmothers, grandparents--even mother-in-laws. As a result, Valentine’s Day has become the second-largest holiday for exchanging cards, after Christmas.

“Valentines used to be exchanged between schoolchildren and lovers,” Pulati says. “Now they’re trying to capture every market.”

The caliber of today’s acerbic cards has some people worried.

“I walked into a Hallmark store to look at valentines, and I was astounded,” says Dr. David Juroe, psychotherapist with the Yorba Park Medical Clinic in Orange. “There were very few cards that expressed deep sentiments.”

Instead of deep emotion, he found cards brimming with low-brow humor.

“A lot of this may have to do with living in a day and age where people are much looser in regards to commitments and relationships,” Juroe says.

Too many have been exposed to divorce, the dark side of romance. Humorous cards reflect modern singles’ fear of commitment.

“There’s a real fear of intimacy,” he says. “People don’t want to express their true feelings,” so they resort to humor.

Many valentines have become downright crass. Jokes about kinky sex, PMS and dieting abound.

A card aimed at women reads:

“To my husband on Valentine’s Day. I think you’re the most handsome, sexy man in the entire world. And I’m not just saying that so you’ll give me flowers. . . . I’d also like to go out to dinner.”

There’s a proliferation of lewd valentines, the kind that might be exchanged between members of the Bundy family on “Married, With Children.”

“For Valentine’s Day, you know what you’d really look great in?” asks a woman on a card. “My bed.”

“People are seen not as people but as objects,” Juroe says. “It’s alarming. They don’t trust anyone. Maybe it comes from growing up in a dysfunctional family. They may think they’ll never be hurt or disappointed by acting aloof. They become emotionally cut off from others.”

Devoid of feeling, men and women start seeing each other as objects from which to extract sex or money.

“Are we saying the only way we know how to express love is through sex? How sad,” Coombs says. “Love is more than sex. Maybe we have a whole segment of the population who does not know how to be tender.”

One card pointed to the direction valentines might be heading in the 1990s:

“I don’t like how Valentine’s Day has been turned into a pagan-filled celebration filled with winged cherubs, overpriced chocolate and uninhibited sex,” it read. “The winged cherubs have got to go.”

SENTIMENTS OF THE PAST--Evalene Pulati gets a valentine every day. N5