It’s About Making Babies!

Hot Alpha Female wrote a guest post on Baggage Reclaim about a disappointing travel trip. The disappointment? The guy she traveled with refused to offer assistance, didn’t help find their way through a busy airport.

Seriously girls think about this, because I think this plays a really important factor in the type of guys that we date and are attracted to. There is no way that we are going to stay with a guy who can’t stand up to us, who won’t make his own decisions, and who exists for the very approval of others.

On a biological level it demonstrates that this is someone who is weak and is unable to take care of us.

So for the guys out there … please please please just tell us what to do!

What HAF hasn’t allowed for, is that leadership takes practice, experience, and good role models. And that this guy sounds more abused than weak. Abused, that is to say, emotionally injured.

You have to take risks, and succeed occasionally, to be ready to help others. Whether the abuser was a parent, a co-worker, or a companion, it is likely someone has instead taught HAF’s milque-toast that he is worthless, not to bother trying to help because he is worthless.

Emotional injuries teach lessons that last a very long time.

What was HAF’s response? Anger. Whether she stated it or not during the trip, her disappointment with his ‘worth’ would have made itself felt - reinforcing the guy’s reluctance to offer anything to anyone.

One specific incident HAF relates in a later comment:

Its like with my bags when i was taking them off. Like ok im a more independant girl and everything and to a certain extent i like having that independance. That does not mean that i wont accept an offer if you want to help me with my bags. Like most of the time if someone offers to help me out … ill accept it as a really nice and helpful gesture. But this dude … nothing nada. He had no problems when i asked him to do stuff for me … but i had to ask all the time!!!

HAF is confused. She might either live by formal etiquette designed for a patriarchal society, or she wants the ‘every individual’ etiquette of feminism. But she walks a fuzzy line in between. If HAF won’t live a consistent manner, if she labels ‘appropriate’ behavior by her perceptions at the time, then how is anyone around her, especially a guy, supposed to guess what ‘appropriate’ means at any given time? Her companion apparently takes that ’stand back and watch’ approach. Whether he has ever learned about helping others, whether he ever learned a more formal etiquette (not all mothers teach their kids such things), he might have experienced what I have. That attempting grace and courtesy with aggressive women is likely to be the wrong thing to do. His experience with HAF might be the reason he takes the quiet approach, or her manner may reflect another person that make the hands-off approach the safest way to proceed. Or, as I said, he might never have learned any different.

What I did *not* see was any attempt, concern, or responsibility on HAF’s part to remedy the guy’s limitations.

How about it, ladies? Have you ever tried encouragement to allow a guy to grow into a fuller, happier life? Maybe help heal the minor (or maybe not-so-minor) abuses in his past? A grateful smile and “Thanks!” to an appropriate guy should do more than grousing about missed opportunities for him to be helpful.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 23rd, 2008 at 11:35 am and is filed under Dating, Interactions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.