The True Romantics

When watching this video, or any similar to it, notice how you feel physically before you hit play and then compare it to how you feel after viewing it. Is your heart rate elevated? Did you get a little fight-or-flight adrenal rush? We laugh to relieve the visceral anxiety we feel for this chump, but think of seeing this in terms of transferring this guy’s stress level to yourself. We know the ship is going to sink before we watch, but we feel, by order of degrees, what this guy is feeling by association to the point that it prompts a chemical response in us. Why?

Is it that through some psychologically evolved mechanism we’ve learned to protect ourselves in similar situations in our primal past? Think about what a man would have to believe in order to overcome that mechanism and place himself in a position of public ridicule that ALL depended on the woman’s response. This woman is mediocre at best – I’d rate her about an HB 5 – and this guy proposes to her in what he undoubtedly believes is a grand chivalric gesture. I’m sure he genuinely believed she’d appreciate his ‘vulnerability’ and create a cherished memory for them both as they gracefully age in their marriage. I doubt either of them will ever forget it now.

In some of the comments they were saying it was a set up, but what’s the point of that? Who’s benefiting from it?

And even if it was contrived, the real lesson being taught is from the ‘audience’ around them. People still want to believe that it was authentic. It’s still a pretty useful illustration of a beta mindset. How many guys like this want to believe that a woman will appreciate his romanticism? It is men who are the real romantics. It’s men who are the imaginative ones when it comes to romance, and all in an effort to provide a woman with the romantic experiences she says she wants. Romance is what Men perceive it to be for women.

Women do not appreciate planned, romantic gestures. I’m sure this guy thought he was being brilliant by noticing how she cuts a cupcake – “girls like it when guys pay attention to the little things, ‘other guys’ don’t listen to women, I’ll show her I’m unique,..” What most men and all women don’t understand is that the things a woman finds romantic are rarely ever planned. Your sweaty t-shirt is more romantic to her than any candlelit evening. It’s the things you don’t think would ever be romantic that stick with her. In the same way you cannot negotiate genuine desire, likewise you cannot engineer genuine romance.

The problem with planned romanticism is that it’s pregnant with an obligation to be appreciated. Men can be romantic, just not the way women say how they expect it. Like pretty much anything else women say, it’s not what they really want, but a man can’t be told what that is, he has to figure it out for himself, otherwise it isn’t genuine. For the high value Man, romance is an effortless and unthinking gesture.