T E X A R K A N A M A G A Z I N E
occupying his thoughts, even when they aren’t in the same room. While that speaks volumes to a girl’s heart, it is barely a blip on a boy’s. In turn, he needs to be the one who initiates the romance because leadership is where he gets his boost. A guy that can walk up to a girl, string two or three intelligible sentences together, and come away unscathed feels like he has conquered the world. Now let it be known loud and clear: TEXTING DOES NOT COUNT TOWARD THIS TYPE OF COMMUNICATION! For the full benefit, the words need to be spoken, or hand-written and heard. Parents, let’s bring back that old-fashioned style of romance to our relationships so that our kiddos will see the behavior modeled and follow suit. Husbands, ask your wife on a date. Leave her a random note of thanks or encouragement. Give her a gift for no reason. Wives, when you receive these little romantic expressions, talk to your kids about how good it makes you feel when your husband does those things for you. Besides, if the wife talks to the children about anything, everyone knows they will spill the beans to their father because children are incapable of keeping information given by their parents to themselves. Thus, the romance cycle will continue not only in your home, but in your children’s homes when they are grown. And when romance is sprinkled into a relationship, whether from a bucket or a thimble, depending on the preference of the recipient, love will be strengthened not only now, but generationally.
Now that I’m the parent of a teenage son, I see how this lack of chivalry phenomenon has negatively affected both young men and young women. There has been a shift from the male to female in the role of pursuer. The girls do the calling. The girls do the date planning. The girls have taken the lead and the guys have become followers. Now, being a strong and confident female who knows what she wants and how to ask for it, is not wrong. But just because a girl is capable of calling a boy and asking him on a date, doesn’t mean that she should. Boys don’t care about the fact that you are thinking of them. They just don’t. It rarely, if ever, crosses their minds. Boy moms will attest to this. When we ask our sons what they are thinking about at any given moment of free time in their day, there is an 82.43% chance the answer will be “nothing” with the other 17.57% being thoughts of when they will eat, what they will eat, what they have eaten already and what activity they can do next to prevent boredom. I’m sure this ratio changes as young men mature and is a vast generalization of the teen male species, but my experience leads me to believe this to be pretty accurate. So, what does that mean for a young lady who thinks about many things all at once? Those thoughts inevitably include ones about whether a certain boy is thinking about her in the same way she is thinking of him. She needs to wait and let him pursue her because she will appreciate it and reap the benefits of the feelings it evokes in her. When she receives that invitation to go on a date or that random call out of the blue, she will light up knowing she is
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L I F E & S T Y L E
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