Every time I start to hate Ashton Kutcher, he gives an interview where he sounds almost… dare I say it… cool. Like, he’s a good guy, and he loves his wife, and he thinks about people and the world and his life in a really interesting way. And then, you know, he does something douchey and I start to hate him again, rinse and repeat. Ashton’s new interview in Parade is one of those good times though – Ashton talks about how much he hates Valentine’s Day (the holiday, not his new movie) because “you should celebrate love 364 days out of the year.” He also said this awesome thing: “It’s not how much you love someone when you love them, but it’s how much you love them when you hate them.” Truth.

The terrible truth.
“I hate Valentine’s Day. I can’t stand it. I think that every day should be a day of romance. I think you should celebrate love 364 days out of the year. Then, on Valentine’s Day, you should get to tell whoever you hate that you cannot stand them. There would be one day of hating, and 364 days of love”

Remembering young love on the big day.
“I was in third grade and there was this girl who sat in front of me who had the prettiest super long hair. I was absolutely infatuated with her. On February 14th you had to hand out Valentines to everybody in the class. We had these little hearts with messages on them, and I would give the slightly more ambiguous ones, like ‘Hugs,’ to people that I wasn’t interested in and I gave this girl the heart that said, ‘Kiss me!’ I was trying to be a little provocative and get her attention. The tragedy was that she didn’t get the point and I never got kissed.”

But it’s still easier for guys.
“We don’t really have bad Valentine’s Days. The thing is, guys have pretty much zero expectations, and when you don’t have any expectations, you can’t really be disappointed. So I don’t think I’ve ever had like a bad Valentine’s Day.”

OK, maybe there was one.
“Demi and I decided that we were going to spend Valentine’s Day with Bruce and Emma. So it was me, Demi, Bruce and Emma, which is great because we’re all best friends and we all hang out. I got to be in charge of booking the restaurant. It was February 14th and we weren’t in Hollywood, where I have a little clout making reservations. So I’m like calling around, trying to pull any kind of juice that I can to get a table. But, I hate dropping my own name, so I’m like, ‘Yes, I’m calling from Mr. Kutcher’s office, he would like a reservation.’ And literally every place was booked and so we ended up sitting at the bar some place.”

How far he’ll go for love.
“I think the most romantic thing that I’ve done is travel a long way to another country for like an hour to see someone I loved and then turn around and go back because I had a commitment I couldn’t cancel. So it was literally not sleeping for two days, going through hell, just to see somebody for an hour.”

Learning how to treat a woman.
“My brother had a heart transplant when he was 13, and my parents were at the hospital a lot so I went and I stayed at a friend’s house. And his mother was this really wonderful, wonderful woman that sort of taught me a bunch of things like table manners and how to treat a woman — pulling out her chair, opening the door for her. So while my brother was in the hospital, I basically learned etiquette and how to use it when you’re dating a woman.”

The secret to a lasting relationship.
“I think one thing sort of defines it which is, it’s not how much you love someone when you love them, but it’s how much you love them when you hate them. It’s when you’re in that moment where you cannot stand what the person you’re with is doing, but you still love them. That’s when you need to show it — not just say it, but show it. You need to take some action. The biggest mistake that most of the women that I know make in relationships is listening to what the guys says. Guys talk the talk, but 90 percent of guys don’t walk the walk. When things get tough it’s not what you say, it’s about what you do.”

You want an example?
“There are certain other things like I can’t handle, but there are certain things that Demi doesn’t do well with. It’s like the gun is on my side of the bed. If somebody breaks into the house, it’s my job to get the gun loaded. She wouldn’t do it.”

[From Parade]

What’s with all of the gun-in-the-bedroom talk lately? It’s like there was a meeting in Hollywood where it was decided that every star needed a gun in their bedroom, and they needed to talk about guns in interviews. Is everyone in Hollywood afraid of being robbed?

Beyond that, I really liked what Ashton said about learning etiquette from a friend’s mom. Do you think that’s when his mother issues started? I’m not being judgy, and there are much, much worse “issues” to have than “falling in love with slightly older moms” (I call it “the MotherLover Syndrome”). But it had to start somewhere for Ashton, and I think that incident may have been the catalyst, right?

Ashton Kutcher’s Parade photos courtesy of Parade online, slideshow here.