Transcription
Chivalry. They are have they have become these elaborate performances that are the bare minimum. They are just you being treated properly. Romance has become a theater. It's not about the future. It's about propping up girls' egos even further.
I mean, oh yeah, it's cute and sweet until you speak to this mother that I was speaking to the other day. Now, she's slightly older than me. She has uh uh sons who are she's several sons and they're grown dating and she was close to tears. She's a really decent woman and her sons are as well. They are educated, employed. They just want to build normal, happy lives. And these girls, she said to me, they don't really have much. They just take and take.
I just turned down a first date I had said yes to. I like that he had made solid plans, but here's a deal breaker. I asked if he was going to send a car for me, and he responded with, "Do you really need that?" I mean, technically, no one needs anything, but yes, that's what I want. You know, they don't have the money for this. She's expecting that he pick her up in a limousine. She's expecting things that he cannot afford, not even for himself.
"I do not accept a coffee or a walk as a possible date option. And neither should I."
"Well, if you can't afford to date, don't date. What do you want?"
"And there's no reciprocity. There's no thoughtfulness." And she said, "Even with all of that, there's no guarantee. There's no final commitment." But now it seems young women are just taught that affection simply arrives. All the gifts, the trips, everything just arrives.
"You got me normal doors."
"My dream car is a..."
Something else she said also stuck with me. She said, "When I met my husband's parents, I was terrified. I desperately wanted them to like me. I spent a lot of effort how in how I behaved with them and now today when I meet these girlfriends of my sons they almost seem indifferent arrive late they always have a headache they don't make any effort to get to know us and she said it's almost like I'm the one who's on audition I'm the one who's nervous to make a good impression on her courtship it used to be you you you want to see the other person make an investment That's what you're looking for. And that making an effort to have the parents like you is you investing in the relationship."
I think these proposals are just the first manifestations. So, here's a mother posting on Facebook a photograph of her daughter's proposal and saying just it's so wonderful to see a boy treating her right. This is just her getting the princess treatment she deserves because she's a princess and it's just the bare minimum. What is this treating her right? And then underneath that, a mother replies with a question. You know, she asks whether the boy had actually made the sign himself cuz in her experience, uh these elaborate proposal posters are usually made by the boy's mother who spends hour on Pinterest creating the perfect display while her son simply um held it for the photograph. So we now have mothers performing romance for on behalf of their teenage sons so that another mother's daughter can can upload it as proof that she's being valued. I can't and everyone celebrates it. Oh, it's so cute. This is so this is really just this um epidemic of narcissistic mothers raising narcissistic daughters. The narcissism in the mother of the boy being look what a perfect ally I raised an ally for princesses everywhere. Everyone yes we are doing better. And then these poor boys. This is not cute.
Chivalry has its purpose. It's a very old concept. It's supposed to be saying I'm trying to make myself into someone who's worthy of your sacrifice. And the woman you're trying to woo, she's supposed to be a maiden. And then she's supposed to transition into someone who sacrifices back and that never happens. She wants to stay in that maiden archetype indefinitely, being given things indefinitely. They want that investment from him. They want the internal courtship without making a commitment towards marriage. Well, you know, until they're 35 and then they complain. Where have all the good men gone?
"Where are we meeting the men that don't stop? Where are we finding them? Where are all the good men at? Where have all the good men gone? Where are all the good men?"
"Where do I find the nice guy that wants a simple, healthy relationship?"
"Where the are you finding good men?"
Another dynamic that we see that that sort of where you see this emotional immaturity I would say lack of transitioning where that should have happened is the ick. I go, "What's the ick?" She goes, "The ick is when you go on a date with a guy he does one thing and you never want him ever." I was like, "That's the least relatable thing I've ever heard in my entire life." I I was like, "What happened?" She goes, "We went to a park. Sack crisscross apples on."
Now therapists and psychologists are coming out and trying to say that no no no uh this reveals a deep neurobiological mate selection mechanism and it's like they search for evolutionary explanations to sort of excuse women of this ridiculous trend.
"What's your biggest ick?"
"It's a train ticket."
"What did you say?"
"Buy a train ticket."
"Yeah, buy a train ticket. Honestly, it's actually disgusting. It's not manly."
"It's not manly to buy a train ticket?"
"No, it's petty. It's little boy behavior."
"It's ridiculous word that they use to disqualify men. I don't believe any of it because uh if if you look at what women say when asked, 'What gives you the ick?' There's no obvious biological principle connecting these behaviors at all. So if this were an ev an evolved mechanism for avoiding poor mates, then we'd expect some consistency, right? Instead, you know, the triggers are astonishingly arbitrary. They occur precisely when the man stops performing effortless confidence and starts revealing that he has feelings, that he is a human being who is sometimes awkward, that becomes emotionally invested, that reveals vulnerability, that he is a human being that she has to show empathy for, she has to relate to, and she gets the ick."
This morning I was on a flight with my fiancée and he got a nose bleed and I got the ick.
"It's so cruel."
"Do you know why? One, because he just got a nose bleed like at the most inconvenient time. We just landed. The seat belt sign was still on. He's doing an 11. I'm like, calm down. Two, he's acting as if it's painful."
"Bless him."
"And I'm like, it's not painful. And he's like..."
"And I'm like, it's not painful though. It's not painful."
"I do it professionally. It's giving it's giving ick and it seems they want someone who appears completely self-sufficient, emotionally controlled, socially desired. They're selecting for a man who can permanently occupy this role of protector and provider, an emotional anchor, someone who requires very little emotional caretaking in return because they want to be in this maiden role forever."
"I get the ick so quickly. Like, if you are not obsessed, if you're not obsessed with me, I don't want it. I'm immediately not interested. Like, what? No. No. No. No. No. No. Thirsty. You need to be absolutely starving for me. If I even feel remotely like you're not as into me as you were yesterday, like, I'm gone. So, sorry about that. Not really sorry."
They want a permanent psychological structure of courtship and for that he can't become someone she has to take care of and perform empathy for etc. This real is disturbing in that sense. Um showing how even in a marriage a man can't get the basic level of empathy from his wife.
"What are you doing? Thought you were working."
"I'm looking at this."
"What is it?"
"It's It's wire. It's a spool of wire. And I'm almost out of it. Can you see the spool of wire?"
"Mhm."
"I'm almost out of it."
"Okay."
"And I've had this spool of wire for like 40 years. I bought it like this a long It's on a piece of a long time ago, but it's like 40 years of my life is in the wire that's gone. Does that make sense? This is what's left. Does that make sense?"
"I'm sorry to hear that and sad for you, but you're wearing your Jets hat and I'm a little concerned right now that you're wearing your Jets hat. I thought that's why you were crying."
"Okay, I'm done."
There's clearly that element of human this interpersonal uh relationship that is that they're unable to form. They know how to consume relationships to to rank them and to critique them. They know exactly how to describe what's wrong. They don't know how to make things work. It's the ache is the emotional language of a generation that has become unusually intolerant of just ordinary imperfection and that makes intimacy completely impossible. I think this is because we have fostered so much fragile narcissism in young women um that they're impo they're they're there are incapable of forming normal relationships. They're only seeking someone to protect that ego, to constantly adore them so neurotic and emotionally fraught that they completely crumble at the sign of any humanity in the man they're dating. That's what the ick says. It's the female narcissist being disgusted at a man's vulnerability.
That's it for today. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please support me by liking and subscribing. And if you're listening on audio, then please, it would help me a lot if you leave a rating um and a review. And head on over to Substack where I hold Google meets and exclusive lives for paid subscribers and all of my articles if you want more from Psycho Babble. And if you're here on YouTube, then please comment. Let me know what you want to hear more about. if there are angles I haven't covered.