Him

by Joseph Whalen

Created on: February 01, 2008

It is only a romantic who looks at this question and immediately answers that the man should pay without giving the matter any further thought. I suppose I'm a romantic at heart as that was my initial reaction as well. However, it is a much more complicated question then it would appear at first glance. There are a number of factors that must be taken into consideration. Even after weighing all the consideration the answer will not be the same for everyone.

Being a recently and happily married man and one of half a married couple that often eats out at least once a twice per week, my wife and I already have a very effective system of alternating responsibility for handling the check. Being of a mindset of maintaining separate financial accountings and each contributing half to all of our joint expenses it is important that we have a fair medium when we indulge in dinners outside of the home. The system we have seems to work pretty well and there are few complaints.

Given the prospect of an additional complexity in our equation of a Valentine's Day dinner out, we would likely abandon our normal alternating pay routine in favor of the more romantic model of me treating my wife to dinner, regardless of whose turn it might be to pay. Not only is this the romantic approach it is also the traditional approach in society for many years now. The man as the suitor is viewed as the provider, the person who takes care of his companion. It is a very Victorian era concept, one that has been distorted to the point of being a modernized version of another distorted concept, that of chivalry.

We cling to the noble and gracious upbringings that we are made familiar with from old courtly love and romantic tales. When in reality people seldom lived in such an idealistic and nave manner. We choose to ignore the more practical considerations of such things as courtly love, which in its time was more akin to adultery than to romance, and instead to build a distorted image of the heroic prince sweeping the damsel in distress off her feet, living happily ever after. We take comfort in these types of stories and do our best to translate some sense of them into our every day realities.

Reality is a much different picture than the idealistic romance impressions that we like to impose on our day to day living. To say romance is dead would be inaccurate. Though romance today is very different than what it was even twenty or thirty years ago. Society is more sophisticated than it was only a short time ago. No longer are women groomed to be dutiful wives bound to a life of subordinate servitude to their higher class husbands. Thanks to the likes of the women's suffragette movement during the latter days of the eighteen and early nineteenth century and the radical women's liberation movements of the nineteen sixties woman have a very different place in today's society. As a result of this equalization of roles, romance has taken on a very different status as well.

While society still has a way to go to ensure that women and men are considered equals, women today play a very different role than they have in the past. Proven to be able and capable in all walks of life from business to politics to home making, women are more partners in relationships today than they ever have been in the past. As such, the traditional notions of romance that were spawned by the idealistic and inaccurate depictions of the Elizabethan and Victorian eras are more fiction now than they ever were. They were traditions and ideas founded in the assumption of women as inferior members of society, to be revered surely, but not to be vocal or prominent members of society. There have been countless victories won in the name of women's rights in the past one hundred years, and rightly so.

To be treated as the fragile and needy damsels in distress from the romantic periods of western history is an insult to many women. Robbing them of their hard won independence and freedom, romance is a reminder of bondage to many women just as surely as slave ships are to African Americans today. As such, the role of romance in America has changed from a man being automatically expected to pay for Valentines Dinner to it being a joint venture. While such a radical change in philosophies helps to reiterate the rights of women, it can be equally disheartening to the suitors who still hold women in high regard while also accepting them as equals.

The world is ever changing and old romantics such as me are a dying breed as a result. While I hold no person on this earth in a higher light than my wife, I still cling to the romance that makes me want to treat her to dinner. I do so not to show I am superior or that I am the bread winner or the lord of the manner. I do so because she deserves to be treated in a special way not just on Valentine's Day but every day of the year. She is my loving wife, my faithful partner, my best friend, my soul mate and the ideal mother of my child. What more could a man possibly ask for in life? Surely she deserves to be treated special, even if it is only the simple act of being treated to dinner. Romance in our relationship is a sign of love, not dominion.

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