About a month ago, I was going to eat one night with one of my girl friends. We arrived at the restaurant, and I went to hold the door open; everyone went through including a couple of people I didn’t know and everything was cool. No one said thank you but that was typical and I did not mind. But while we were eating, my friend started to say that she wishes guys were chivalrous like they used to be in the old movies.
I believe that chivalry is not dead. Most of the girls I know say that they would rather open their own door and pull out their own chair and then they complain about how guys have lost all sense of chivalry. Women believe that chivalry was back in the days of knights and damsels in distress and Romeo and Juliet and Camelot.
I believe that most guys really are the same chivalrous guys that the old movies portray, it’s just women have this notion of becoming so independent that they have lost what it really means to be chivalrous. There is one profession guys today would kill to have but can not and that is a knight; to be able to say that they were as kind as they were fearless and to be appreciated for that. Women start to see that opening doors and pulling out chairs is just a normal everyday thing for men and do not realize that we are doing it to be nice. Most of the guys I know have the idea that a woman should never have to touch a door or pull out her own chair if there is a guy around; they are too precious for that.
So I listened to my friend on what she believed chivalry to be all about and we finished eating. I grabbed all the trash and threw it away, I held the restaurant door open and we walked to the car. I went to open her door and she said, “Ryan, you’re not my boyfriend and you don’t have to open my door.” So I replied, “I know, but I am a man and this is what I believe chivalry is. All women deserve to be treated like a queen. All men should do for every woman what they would do for their girlfriends.”