It never "just clicks". Meaningful relationships take work. In the modern adversarial dating environment, people are very wary of one another. Helping someone get to know you means getting them to let down their defenses. People are defensive and cautious these days for good reason, but often times it means meaningful connections with potential just don't happen out of apprehension.
These days, a lot of people want a readymade partner. All the tough work of becoming should be finished, there should be no personal growth left to do. If he/she doesn't already have everything you expect then time to look somewhere else. This is unhealthy. We have to rediscover how to look past the trinkets and into the human being we say we want something more with.
It's a pretty idea that people just click, that true love happens effortlessly, but it is not true, and it is a perfect fiction that destroys peoples reasonable expectations and destroys their lives in the process. How many people waited for perfection like that until they found themselves alone at 40? The only thing that just clicks is sexual attraction.
If someone believes someone else owes them romance for putting in effort they have no idea how to go about it, perhaps they never will. When you meet someone who you think is special and you decide to do the work of getting to know them and putting yourself out there for them, you do that knowing that they might not reciprocate, you accept failure as a possibility and you choose to take that risk and engage gracefully.
The idea of courting where to put it bluntly you are campaigning to get someone to see you as worthwhile is pretty weird.
Which isn’t to say relationships aren’t hard work but that it’s not front-loaded. At least in my experience.
I don't think courting is trying to front-load the effort, but rather to avoid back-loading effort. Raising kids is a lot of work, and to prove that the two of you are willing to put effort into that, you put effort into planning cool dates while courting. Once the kids come along less effort is spent on cool dates, and more effort is spent on the kids.
In all my long term relationships we lived together for a long period of time and only one resulted in children. So I don’t think courting was particularly required to get to know one another or find a stable situation to raise kids.
On top of which the idea that planning cool dates is a good proxy for raising kids or even long term compatibility is utterly hilarious.
And that’s dodging round the implication that the main reason to have a relationship is to have kids which isn’t true at all.
I spent some time in my life doing the dating thing, attraction first, and they weren't bad times, but they weren't things I wanted til I die. For me, the only long term relationship that matters is the last one. Doing things the way I've always done them wasn't going to work, and honestly I wasn't particularly looking, I just stumbled into someone that I thought was amazing and decided to do it right. There's sex before marriage, but it didn't start off as a sexual attraction. I didn't want to mess around and see where it goes, I knew where I wanted it to go, and I was upfront about it.
Being deliberate about what you want, and clear and open about wanting more from the start, it is a risk, it is easy to put the wrong message out there, and it is work from the get go. Putting the effort in to show that you really care, that this is really what you want, and that you're not some clingy weirdo trying to wife up the first girl that looks at you is not easy in today's environment.
The writer's action of quitting his job can be seen that he gave up something and therefore deserves her affection. Very subtle.
There are men like that, and women too, and it's bad, but I'm not seeing this from the author of the article at all.
Your analogies kind of contradict each other. If someone goes hunting for several days but doesn't get a kill, would that person say they're owed an animal? Hunting isn't a transactional activity. Dating/courting aren't transactional either.
It's just gross and misogynistic behavior.