What Happened to the “Better Times”?

What’s Gone Wrong?
Dating. It is not what it used to be. In the olden days of flowers and pretty dresses with gloves and those cute little hats and gentlemen holding doors open for the ladies, things were much simpler. Now, a woman is lucky if she can get a man to even sometimes offer to do these simplest of things. Things that, in the past, were considered common courtesy and an offense to a woman’s character if they were not done, or if they didn’t at least make an effort.

What Has Happened To All the Gentlemen?
That’s a really good question. Don’t get me wrong, I know not all men have forgotten how to treat a lady. But in today’s society it is hard to come by one who knows what manners are.

Communication Breakdown
What has happened is a lack of communication, for starters. Another problem is the way the men were raised. It is a fact that if a boy grows up in a broken home, is neglected or abused in any kind of way, they will repeat the cycle. This includes manners and common courtesies. If a boy does not learn these things while growing up, then how are they going to know to teach it to their sons, and so on and so on. It is a cycle of no mannered men. And I believe it started in the ’60’s.

General Abandonment
What I mean by general abandonment is of all manners. Not just being nice to women. But many men are starting to revert back to the mentality of “Mine’s is bigger than yours,” and mark their territory in some animalistic way. Ok, granted, according to the evolution theory, we came from apes, right? Even so, that doesn’t mean that anyone of us have to act like apes! Aren’t we better than that? Isn’t that why we started walking upright? To become a better person. And for many centuries, men treated women with the respect they deserved. But now? I don’t want to even think about it.

How many times have you heard of a woman getting beaten up because she spilled a drink, or maybe she was caught looking at the wrong person while walking down the street? Every day, we are hearing about some kind of brutality in the dating world. Or how many times do we hear on the news of a woman being raped because “She was asking for it,” even though she said “no”? It is wrong how a man who does things like this to a woman thinks the he “owns” her, that she is his property to do with what he will.

So What Are We Supposed To Do?
Well, to tell you the truth, there is not much we CAN do. Except of course avoid the ones that start acting weird right off the bat. Or, we could try to put up with it and hope they will change for us. But that usually won’t happen either. What we can do is have patience. Because one of these days, we will find someone who opens that door for us, without even thinking about it. If we drop something, they will pick it up and not have to think twice. Patience.

There is one other thing. We might one day find someone who has no manners or common courtesy and they might act like an animal, but you get a feeling that there is something about them. you aren’t sure what, but something. That is the type of person that’s a keeper. It is matter of instinct, is all. That one special person that you aren’t so sure about, but they have the vibe of potential. There is hope with that person. That is the type that CAN change.

So if you happen to be walking sown a road one day, or are walking in the park and someone catches your eye, drop something. If they don’t even look at you, forget it. But if they look, and start waling, but they come back – That’s the one who is probably going to end up your soul mate.