Chivalry

Every book I read or movie I watched as a young girl started off with "once upon a time," and ended with "and they lived happily ever after."  I dreamed of prince charming taking me off into the sunset on his white horse.  When I thought about my future I knew I would find a man who would open doors for me, cherish my every move, and treat me like a queen.

 As I began dating I found a person who opened my doors most of the time, sent me flowers on random days, went and got the car if it was raining, and walked on the side of the road closest to the traffic and offered to help me out of the car, or help me climb up a mountain.  I dated that man and I married that man and I'm proud to say that my husband still does most of these things, some of the time.

In doing some research for this blog post I came across a website that stated he would perform 5 acts of chivalry until he got married.  "Chivalry is only good for the chase.  Once you've caught them, it doesn't matter how you treat them."  I know this isn't the case with my why my husband has slacked off slightly since getting married and I think some of the reason is that I've proven to myself and my husband that I don't need him to do these things for me.  The expectation is that I'll just take care of myself because I shouldn't have to ask for help.  We all know that we live in the time of the independent woman and we all know that if forced, we could live by ourselves and take care of ourselves. I think though that the true act of chivalry is knowing that whether a woman can take care of herself or not, she really wants you to be her knight in shining armor.

Now that I have a son, I realize that it's more important now that I raise a man of chivalry.  I heard a story the other day of a man who literally laid down his coat over a puddle so his wife didn't have to walk through it.  As I listened to the story I thought not wow I wish my husband would do that for me but instead I thought how do I teach my son to be the man that will do that for his wife.

So for the past few days, I've been telling my son what he should do for other people and the realization that I've come to is that I have to model that and my husband has to model that.  We have to as parents make sure that no matter what is going on with our jobs, or how tired we are that we are constantly modeling the type of behavior we want our children to internalize.  If I want my son to learn that you open doors for women, then my husband has to model that.  If I want my children to talk when they get angry, then I need to model that.   If I want my children to have healthy marriages in their future, then I have to model that.  I cannot become lax even for one day.

I've become the kind of teacher that I can't stand when it comes to teaching my children.  I'm all talk and no hands-on, modeling, or investigating.  I have to change my approach because I want my son to be chivalrous.  I want my son to hold the doors open for women.  I want my son to understand that sometimes making someone happy is the best feeling in the world.  All of these things I have to model for my little man.  My little man will be a prize for some lucky lady in the far away future.  My Little Man will be some lady's prince charming.  I have to start now because unlearning a habit takes a long time and sometimes comes with a lot of anguish.  Chivalry will make a return to my household.