USO PA BA ANG HARANA?

I’ve written about friendship, that sweet giddy rush we call kilig, Valentine’s Day, ghosting and seen-zoning and all the other clever ways people vanish from relationships, cheating, lavender marriages, the ups and downs of parenting, love letters, and even a love that remembers long after forgetting should have set in.

- RICARDO T. PAMINTUAN

But I don’t remember ever writing about courtship, so here goes. Listen up, boys and girls.

I often hear millennial and Gen Z women lamenting the shortage of guys who are boyfriend material. They bemoan that the dating pool isn’t dry, just shallow, perhaps, like many eligible suitors. Apparently, the good ones are either already taken or gay, while others are F-boys or otherwise still tied to their mama's apron strings.

For the most part, the ladies feel the guys are simply too lazy to put in any effort. Maybe it’s the apps that have reduced courtship to left and right swipes, where rejection is just a screen tap. But really, what hafen, guys?

Is it romantic indolence? Hubris (especially for the pogi boys who think girls should be chasing them). Or maybe introversion? It could be atychiphobia — an intense fear of failure. (You have to hand it to the Greeks for inventing words that rightfully belong in a spelling bee.)

Back in the day, long before gadgets started running our lives, courtship was a rite of passage. It just happened. I remember my father preparing me for it by teaching me the finer points of wooing girls. I was only eight. I was more concerned with food, books, and games. Girls were farther down in my list of priorities. Still, I listened, and I learned.

He didn’t share the cheap tricks, like spiking ladies’ drinks or faking swagger. He taught me something way more important: how to be a gentleman, but unlike the drug-dealing Mickey Pearson type from the 2019 sleeper hit The Gentlemen.