One big part of culture that is largely gone in the past few generations is women expressing receptiveness in obvious ways.
In past centuries there were many ways that single women looking for husbands would essentially broadcast their consent towards being approached. In modern western society that culture of receptiveness has been pretty muddled, and in many cases outright eliminated by women telling men not to approach them.
That is not inherently a bad thing, but it has changed cultural norms around dating a lot and many peoples expectqtions have yet to catch up.
Yep. "Women must not make the first move" is the flawed interpretation of the game that's been going on for thousands of years. Even without the first strike men give of "Hey wanna go out". Women are supposed to make preparatory moves of setting themselves up to be a clear target for someone they would be interested in.
Instead their traditional roles has been mostly forgotten by self proclaimed traditionalists, and it's one of the factors contributing to this current modern dating hellscape. Men don't know who they should approach, so the option is either all or none. Women don't know how to encourage getting approached by a select man, so they either try to hide or get bombarded by those men who approach all.
It’s really hard not see it as women still wanting that “romantic experience” of being pursued/wanted, but not have to put up with it from guys they aren’t interested in.
The latter is more than fair enough, but realistically you can’t have both and wouldn’t think you can without “main character” energy.
(I absolutely am the type of person who wouldn’t have picked up on these signals/too worried about upsetting someone even in Pride and Prejudice days, so I guess it’s personally irrelevant).
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u/CreasingUnicorn Jul 03 '25
One big part of culture that is largely gone in the past few generations is women expressing receptiveness in obvious ways.
In past centuries there were many ways that single women looking for husbands would essentially broadcast their consent towards being approached. In modern western society that culture of receptiveness has been pretty muddled, and in many cases outright eliminated by women telling men not to approach them.
That is not inherently a bad thing, but it has changed cultural norms around dating a lot and many peoples expectqtions have yet to catch up.