Against my better judgment, I once decided to play matchmaker with my best friend.
Anna* is slim and delicate, with a good-natured personality. I thought she’d be a great match for Scott, a slightly broody computer programmer with an artsy side. He was tall and dark-haired, just her type.
To keep things casual, my friend Henry—one of Scott’s good friends—and I came along to play the convenient chaperons. As we waited for our dates to arrive, I couldn’t help but indulge in a few ill-fated daydreams, hoping that my friend would finally meet her prince.
My expectations fell dramatically when the fallen prince arrived a half hour late, complaining about the rain and traffic jams. He took one look at Anna, decided he wasn’t interested, and all good graces and common decency went out the window. He ordered his food first, started digging into his plate even before the rest of our entries arrived, and treated my friend like she was invisible.
Anna, bless her heart, tried gallantly to draw Scott in by asking him questions about his job and his hobbies. In this department, he was all too happy to oblige—and talk about himself.
When the bill came, we were a few dollars short after everyone had thrown their money in (Dutch treat was a given, considering how the evening was going). I thought the boys would offer to help. Instead, I got a helpless look from Henry, whose wallet had mysteriously run dry, and a defiant glare from Scott. Obviously, since I hadn’t come up with the woman of his dreams, he wasn’t going to contribute another red cent to the evening.
So Anna and I did what any upstanding gentleman would do: we paid the difference.
Like other yentas whose fix ups have gone horribly wrong, I wanted to cover my head with my babushka scarf and hide underneath the table. I felt badly for Anna, not just because her date turned out to a selfish, arrogant jerk.
Once again, she had become the unlucky recipient of bad manners and lack of social graces from the opposite sex.
Several months ago, she drove twenty miles from Maryland on a weeknight to meet an Internet date in Virginia. Just like Scott, the man stared stonily into his drink for an hour and wouldn’t talk to her. In an email conversation with another Internet prospect who also lived in Virginia, she asked if he ever came up to Maryland on business. Perhaps they could meet for a drink.
His huffy response was: “I guess it’s too much to ask that you drive halfway to meet me?”
I got an email from her shortly after this exchange. “Chivalry is dead,” she wrote.
In an age where it’s perfectly acceptable to delete someone’s online profile with a touch of a finger, and dismiss someone at a speed dating event after talking to them for exactly three minutes, it’s not surprising that old-fashioned manners have been replaced by modern-day hostility and a sense of entitlement.
Men are no longer required to open doors for women, pay for dinner on a first date, or drape a coat over us when it’s cold. The men reading this are undoubtedly thinking, why should we act like gentlemen? What’s in it for us? Women make as much money as we do. They steal our jobs, have babies on their own. They’re big girls. They should be paying for our dinners, shouldn’t they?
And some of the women, in their high-powered suits and beepers and palm pilots are sneering that they don’t want to go back to the days when they had to act like mindless ninnies and drop handkerchiefs on the floor.
Quaint romanticism may be silly, but in my opinion, it’s the ingredient that once made dating a special event. Nowadays, nothing is special anymore. A typical date has the aura and significance of withdrawing money from an ATM machine.
