Remember the purpose of chivalry: to be a gentleman in a world of bros.
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When did chivalry die? When did I miss the meeting about opening doors for women? Be it car doors, doors at the movie theater and restaurants, when was it decided this was taboo? Sure I pay for dinner, or at least I attempted to when I asked my girlfriend out on our first date. She allowed me to pay, I say “allowed” because that’s exactly what it was, she allowed me to be the gentleman I think I should be, and it was a sign of respect from her. Don’t be confused, though, my sweet Southern Belle is the woman who snags the check from the waiter the instant it gets within ten feet of the table or hijacks them by “going to the ladies room” before it even has a chance to make it when she feels it’s her turn to pay.
the amazing part of the beginning was that in the time we had to be apart, we didn’t talk about ex’s, but rather the things we had learned and the things that we now knew to be real deal breakers in a relationship.
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I didn’t leave things to chance when we first started talking. It was early in our courting, before the first date. We didn’t live in the same town or the same state, but we’re still thirty minutes from each other. Her schedule as a single mom and mine with odd days off ensured we had to talk for three weeks before our schedules finally met up. In those three weeks, we covered a lot of territory and we both were coming off failed marriages (failed only in the fact they didn’t last forever as we thought they would). She has a daughter; I have two dogs and never had children. I was on the edge of forty and she was six years younger than me. But the amazing part of the beginning was that in the time we had to be apart, we didn’t talk about ex’s, but rather the things we had learned and the things that we now knew to be real deal breakers in a relationship.
For her, it was disrespect. For me, it was being used. I asked her about more children and my choice that led to a vasectomy in 2006. We sorted through our years of marriage to discover how easy it was to not get lost in the dating game. It all led to where I described that my manners are something out of the 40’s or 50’s: “I’ll hold doors open for you, I open car doors and close them when you’re safely and completely inside, and in the winter, I start your car.” I felt weird even saying those things because I don’t see it happen too much anymore. My dad did and continues to do it for my mom after forty-something years together, and that’s how I grew up. It was proper, considerate, and gentlemanly. But in the 21st century, it’s gauche.
In today’s society, courtesy has been replaced with the thought that there must be an angle for opening a door or being polite.
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I have nothing against, and prefer, strong independent women who have their own agendas for fun, love, friends, and personal time. I have the same standards for myself. In today’s society, however, courtesy has been replaced with the thought that there must be an angle for opening a door or being polite. If I reach the door before you, I’m the guy that holds it open, this doesn’t mean I want you to have my kids or looking for a commitment, I’m just being “nice.” I can’t tell you how many times I stand, holding the door open just to have someone say, “I got it” and wait for me to get out of the way so they can grab the door and hold it as they go inside.
To be fair, there are a couple ways to hold a door open. You have the “butt-dial” where you are holding the door open with your ass pressed against the glass and are making an uncomfortable narrow walkway between your groin and the open door space. You have the “Secret Service” method, where you stand out of the way without making eye contact or conversation because you’re surveying the landscape for snipers. Then you have “The Gentleman,” where you hold the door open out of the way of entering traffic while smiling and looking at the people who enter. More often than not, that is how it’s done at Sunday church. “The Gentleman” method allows for another kind person to take over the job if there are long lines of people coming through, thereby relieving you without allowing the door to close on anyone and make you look inconsiderate.
The problem with so much change in such a short period of time is that, along with other now-defunct social norms, men and women become confused on what is appropriate and what can be seen as domineering or sexist.
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Let’s be honest. Male chivalry has gone through significant changes in the 21st century, and not all of them are bad. But the problem with so much change in such a short period of time is that, along with other now-defunct social norms, men and women become confused on what is appropriate and what can be seen as domineering or sexist. The simple rule now is to do what feels right, and if you can muster it, do it with a confident (not creepy) smile. But don’t, for the love of everything that is holy, don’t … DO NOT … under any circumstances, refuse give up your hold on the door.
You know what I’m talking about, like two people who get to a stop sign looking to make a turn in front of each other; no one wants to go first, you wave, then they wave, then you both try to go, then laugh at each other and continue the waving each other ahead. It’s amazing there aren’t more of us dead at stop signs. Someone has to take the initiative to go. If you’re holding a door and someone doesn’t like it, give up the hold and let them do it. People may have an attachment to holding open their own doors, you never know, so never insist on holding it. But by no means should you stop doing it. I still do it for my girlfriend, and strangers, men, women, five or ninety-five-year-olds, it doesn’t matter, manners and kindness know no age, sex, size, gender, etc.
Don’t let second-guessing get the better part of you being you, and it doesn’t start or end with doors either; help people, offer a hand getting people’s groceries in their car, push a cart to the cart corral in the parking lot, if you need a cart offer to take the one someone’s pushing to the cart-corral. There doesn’t need to be a huge justification for kindness and chivalry, but don’t let it die, redefine, reassess, and rewrite the rules, but don’t forget their purpose, to be a gentleman in a world of bros.
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Photo: Getty
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Incidentally, chivalrous sort of rhymes with frivolous.
Or is it the other way around?
I hit the handicapped button and the door flies open for everyone. Everything should be automated. Then this conversation will be a lot more frivolous than it already is. Robots win chivalry dies. In other news, teenage girls are cutting off their vulvas and American doctors are calling it genital cosmetic correction. High class term for corporatized FGM?
Please tell me that this is a joke, BH.. Please tell me that our girls have not gone this far in absorbing the beauty myth.
where did you read of this. I may have to write an essay myself.
BTW, the rhyme above was, for lack of a better word, epic.
I think we made the point I wrote about, the changes in society have made certain ideas and beliefs we once took for granted as now being contested. It’s amazing to see how the differences are alive and well, all triggered because of a viewpoint of opening the door for someone.
I think the issue is if opening a door for someone is good then why should it be practiced by men specifically? Why is men only challenged everywhere then pushed in one instance only? IMO that gives people rightful cause for concern.
John,
That would be a good follow-on piece, the view from the other side of the table, a woman’s standpoint. I can only present my male, heterosexual viewpoint.
I say thank you to women who hold the door open for me.
Growing pains, Russell. Just growing pains.
“We live in funny times. Where the hardest core porn is defended but the idea of opening a door for a woman specifically is treated with radio-active dislike.” “There is something wrong in shaming how other people wish to conduct their relationships just because it’s not something you want.” I disdain hollow and obligatory genuflections to laissez faire sensibilities whenever they’re superficial or otherwise insincere: Better to dispense with the nods to ‘live-and-let-live’ altogether than to smother it into meaninglessness or hypocrisy, under a mountain of caveats, contradictions, and rhetorical u-turns. It’s one thing to be zealously self-serving, biased, or arbitrary-… Read more »
“But what’s insidious is when they also want to pretend (and expect everyone else to pretend along with them) that that’s not really what they’re doing; that they’re not really just arguing zealously for a blatant double (or arbitrary) standard, when they are. To paraphrase Hannah Arendt; what makes hypocrisy so detestable is that it is very transgressor the who simultaneously bears false witness against themselves.” >>> EGG ZACTLY If this was about being equally “chilvarous” to everyone, just because you are that kind of person – wanting nothing, and expecting nothing – that not a problem. But if it’s… Read more »
Chivarly as it is classically understood IS going out of style. Poke it with a fork…it’s done! Why? Because it totally disempowers all peoples of all genders, and unlevels the playing field of egalitarianism. A 8, 9, 10 is going to be the object of a zillion more chivalrous acts than a1, 2, 3. Why? Because the OBJECTS of the act of chivalry are – more often than not – the OBJECTS of desire for the supposed knight, m’lady (WEG). Again, there are exceptions to every rule, but that’s the rule, mostly. Why? Because the idea that you are a… Read more »
Gentleman don’t pay, suckers do. I would not want to date a woman who saw an act of paying as sexy from the gender perspective. Being generous is nice but not the gendered expectation of a man paying for a woman. A good way to weed bad women out of your life is to see if they get offended when you ask them to go dutch on a first date. Women don’t need men to provide for them, humans need their partner to share assets with them for a family but in the initial dating people can pay their own… Read more »
“A good way to weed bad women out of your life is to see if they get offended when you ask them to go dutch on a first date.” LIkewise – you do realize that there are people out there that believe a good way to weed out ‘bad’ men (whatever that means in your perspective since you labeled women thus), is by weeding out men who are unwilling to share of themselves (money or otherwise) on dates. I’ve been on dates with men that clearly had very strong views about the unfairness of paying. It wasn’t that they didn’t… Read more »
I thank the Lord that the type weeded me right out of the picture…and allowed me to see the wife I share my life with. My equal, my partner, my hero.
” Gentlemen don’t pay,suckers do”. Well Archy ,many of those “suckers ” end up with a life partner ,children a home and family BECAUSE they show they are generous men and not stingy. How many many times have you invited out a woman that is everything what you dream of: the woman with a house, educated , intelligent, slim, petit , has her life in order ,copes well in life ( I guess you also like her to be pretty as well)….? etc….. Imagine that you meet her and see that she kind of like you and is attracted to… Read more »
Of course if she’s BOTH slim and petite,we’re willing to let our well-reasoned and even passionately egalitarian views have the night off. I bet even Brother Archie would be willing because – you know – Socrates!
Is it any wonder so many hets just despise the oppo?
I am so glad to hear that :).
I started to get worried about Archy and his love life.
Archy, Although your point of view may not fit for me, I can understand it works for you. The issue for me is when I ask someone out, I don’t get too hung up on who’s paying. If I ask, then I prepare myself to pay, because I am doing the asking. If my date wants to go Dutch or allow me to pay, fine, but I prepared for what I was good with. If I were concerned with paying for a meal, I may choose to do something else, a picnic, walk in the park, or 100 other possibilities… Read more »
Russell,
My point of view is that if what you’re talking about is reciprocal, and not a one way street men->women, then you’re talking about (common) courtesy and not chivalry.
So why not call a spade a spade?
FlyingKal, Good point, for me there is a distinction, saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ are courtesies and are polite when given back. Chivalry is what I consider more above and beyond courtesy. It all depends on one’s definition. Some people may think opening a door is a courtesy. But am I opening a door for a woman or man that I wish to show special attention to? There again can be the difference. I’m glad you brought this up because this is the ambiguity in the 21st Century I was talking about. So many beliefs have gone through changes, one… Read more »
Russell, I think you didn’t quite get the point I brought up, because it seems to me you’re still trying to make two opposing points at once. Perhaps that’s where you see the ambiguity? I may hold open a door for someone, anybody. It doesn’t have to be a “special someone” to me and I don’t need to have ulterior motives to do so. But that doesn’t mean I would slam the door in the face of a special someone if I were to date one. That would be pretty obvious to anyone capable of holding two thoughts at the… Read more »
FlyingKal – in your own relationships, you should label behavior however you want. Please feel free to use the word ‘courtesy’ for your own relationship. But there is nothing wrong with using the world ‘chivarly’ onto itself or other people having the freedom to use whatever words they want to use to describe things in their own relationships. I like being in a relationship with a man who is chiverlous. There is nothing wrong with that. There is also nothing in that comment that suggests that I don’t do nice things for my partner too. We live in funny times.… Read more »
” Where the hardest core porn is defended but the idea of opening a door for a woman specifically is treated with radio-active dislike”.
Maybe Erin that we have a correlation here?
The more high core porn you use the less willing you are to open doors for women ….
Hi KIM, If someone, anyone, holds a door open for you, does it matter to you if it is a man or a woman doing so? Does it matter if it is a boy or a girl, a young person or a senior? What expectations do you carry for a person opening a door for you? If it is a man who isn’t your husband/partner/romantic interest/fuck-buddy, would you actually hold it against him for doing so? And considering the vast majority of people having slammed a door in my face have been women, I would be rather intrigued to see… Read more »
FlyingKal I use to hold the door open for anyone no matter age, gender, looks…. Still I love it when a man hold the door for me , and does it with a smile and a blink in his eye that tells me that he see me as a woman. Just as I like that he offers to pay on the first date even though I know I will pay my 50% of everything if we end up as a couple. In fact I know I may have to pay more than him if needed. I always have. But the… Read more »
KIM, Just for the record, I have never asked someone out on a date and expected them to pay for whatever fraction of it. Then again I have rarely if ever been taken up on the suggestion. But if someone were to ask me on a date to Paris, I would take it in a split second. (Although I would much rather go to Verdon…) But I think you got my question backwards. It wasn’t whether you used to open doors for other people, but how you regarded people opening doors for you that wasn’t in any way a potential… Read more »
Flyinkal
I agree with you.
Verdon is even better than Paris.
When a person is not a potential mate , opens doors for me I feel seen and not invisible ,and I feel it is a friendly gesture , that tell me this person is not my enemy. A little bit of tender loving care from a a stranger or somebody I know just a little.
It is always a nice happening during the day.
If it is a tiny little flirt I still like it.
DJ, Thank you for the comment, I appreciate you taking the time. You do make some good points and I love to hear people’s points of view because my truth isn’t necessarily your truth. You’re correct in the history of chivalry, today or even in the last half century chivalry is not what it originally was hundreds of years ago. Like in all things, change in inevitable, and so much change is obvious in only the last few years. My article was not to insinuate women can’t open a door for herself and would need a man to do the… Read more »
Understand, Russell.
I was trying to expand on the topic, not engage contention. Brave new world, uncharted waters today, and we must proceed cautiously.
I’m glad that you took the comment in that context.
“When did chivalry die? When did I miss the meeting about opening doors for women? Be it car doors, doors at the movie theater and restaurants, when was it decided this was taboo? Sure I pay for dinner, or at least I attempted to when I asked my girlfriend out on our first date. ” _______________ Because that is not chivalry, but entitlement and servitude. True chivalry is the act of sacrificing for one less fortunate, or in need, not servicing through expectation and entitlement based upon genitalia. It was charged to men in the past because men held the… Read more »