Why wooing isn't wonderful

Well we have threads all the time about what women expect from men they date and I think by and large what the ladies are really looking for is some kind of barometer of how safe they're going to be in a relationship with the guy. I'm here to tell you ladies, wooing tells you NOTHING about that.

Let's do this David Letterman style. Top 10 reasons why wooing isn't wonderful.

10. It's commercializing the whole romance game. Valentine's day, flowers, etc. and making it a lot more expensive and headachy to even ask you out on a date. I wouldn't if I was in his shoes.
9. It's creating the idea that many women think the world revolves around them and that maybe very few women are actually worth dating so why even bother?
8. It's putting a straight jacket on the guy's spontaneity bc he's gotta first figure out what princessy ideal he has to measure up to on a date. There goes any idea of just having fun with you.
7. It's short-circuiting real communication in favor of nice pretty and largely meaningless gestures done solely to impress you. It's not the real intimacy you say you want.
6. It's creating a situation where we aren't really real either. We're playing some fantasy fairytale princess in some own romantic movie in our mind instead of being present with whoever we're with and actively creating a pleasant moment with them. That's not my ideal of being a feminine feminist. Sorry!
5. Most of the time the list of wooing must haves is invisible, so it's a test no guy can pass. No one can read our mind.
4. It's causing us to take passive roles in creating a relationship. It's really not fair to expect the guy to do all the work of creating the romance in the relationship.
3. It's making women look like they are all Prima Donna Difficult.
2. It's putting an impossible Hollywood standard in our minds that can make an otherwise great guy seem real disappointing.
1. It's not real at all. It's fake. You're not seeing the real guy, you're seeing an act.

Trust me ladies there is an inner monster in every guy, and until you see it, you don't know what you're committing to. Wooing just hides that monster from view. It's your best interest to get rid of the wooing stage as fast as possible so you can see who you're really in the real world dating.

Maybe not the best written list and I'm sure I'm asking for it by taking on such a cherished notion as wooing. Oh well ... I've got my flame retardent knickers on. Fire away.

Hm, I think we must be thinking about different things when we talk of wooing. I don't think about it in terms of buying things or going out to fancy dinners (those certainly can be elements, but they're not the point or even necessary to wooing in my mind). Rather, wooing is about showing interest in a way that is thoughtful and proactive...demonstrating interest in a way that is personal to the one you are pursuing.

While wooing can be fake, I don't think I've ever done it out of a sense of obligation or something that I "had" to do, but rather it was simply a natural extension of where I was at. Like many guys, I have a certain amount of "provider" drive within me: if I'm interested in a woman, I enjoy doing things which bring a smile to her face. I don't feel pressure to woo, or that I can't enjoy a date because of worrying about what she wants...because if I were to do those things out of a sense of obligation I'd feel I was leading her on and I'm interested in doing that.

Certainly this isn't giving women a license to be completely passive. I'm happy to take initiative, but I want that interest and initiative clearly reciprocated before things get very far, otherwise I'll lose interest. I also agree that women should keep in check lofty demands about wooing is...different guys express themselves in different ways, and trust me when I say that you really don't want any wooing that you have to demand to get.

So in short while I think that it's important to keep our fantasies in check, I certainly enjoy wooing as a relationship develops and reject the notion that it is fundamentally some fake, commercialized endeavor.

Trust me ladies there is an inner monster in every guy, and until you see it, you don't know what you're committing to.

I can't believe no one called you out for this bit of nonsense.

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Wooing isn't about making you understand who I am, it's about expressing that I care about you and that I care enough to know something about who you are.
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