The Story of Luke and Rapunzel, and why the Grand Gesture is Bullshit.
Anyone online in the UK this week has probably come across the story of Luke from Bristol - (see here for original story:
Luke decided (and announced publicly and on social media) that playing the piano non-stop on the village green would be an appropriate way to “win back” the girlfriend, known to him as “Rapunzel”, who rejected him after their four-month affair.
There was, understandably, a fair bit of discussion on this. Some people (mostly men, it seems) thought it was a romantic gesture. Others (mostly women) thought it wasn’t. After a fair bit of exposure and some fairly passionate debate, Luke from Bristol has finally stopped playing, after an incident at 4 am last night (someone punched him – I wonder why?). Since then, the debate has continued, with some people (mostly men) saying how ungrateful and incomprehensible women are to reject The Kind of Romantic Gesture All Women Want, and some (mostly women) saying; “Serves him right.”
Now I don’t know Luke from Bristol. He may well have problems of his own, and I don’t believe that punching anyone in the face is necessarily the best way to solve them. However, there is a conversation to be had about male perceptions of What Women Want, and women’s perceptions of What Makes a Romantic Gesture, and how those ideas can cause conflict, misunderstanding, and, in some cases, abuse.
First, let’s look at where the idea of the Grand Gesture came from. Given the nickname that Luke gave his ex-girlfriend, let’s start with Rapunzel.
The story: Rapunzel has been trapped in a tower for the whole of her life. Along comes the Prince to rescue her. After a number of adventures (tasks), he manages to do so, and thereby earns his reward – that is, the girl herself, all-too-often represented in fairytales as the prize the hero wins, after having fulfilled his tasks. This scenario exists in so many classic fairytales: Snow White; the Sleeping Beauty; Rapunzel. In all these cases, the girl has never even met the guy she ends up marrying. Snow White and Beauty are both unconscious: Rapunzel is at the top of a tower, and presumably only gets to see the top of his head. Not the greatest basis for a lasting relationship. But these stories are all based on the idea that the girl will happily put out out of sheer gratitude. The guy wins the girl by fulfilling a series of tasks. The girl conveniently falls in love with the guy because he fulfilled all the tasks. No-one ever asks the girl whether she really wants the guy. No-one asks what would have happened if she’d just said: “Thanks, but I never asked you to do these tasks for me in the first place. Now jog on, there’s a good chap, and let me get on with my own life.”
And here’s the problem. The history of the romantic novel is littered with this kind of bullshit thinking. The woman is all-too often a passive player in the game. And modern men and women are still being fed the myth that men should make grand gestures in order to deserve them.
But here’s the thing. Love just doesn’t work that way. If you don’t love someone, then no grand gesture is going to change things. The public proposal at the football match, the guy who fakes his own death before leaping out of the ambulance covered in theatre blood, clutching an engagement ring (yes, that did happen); the guy who swears he won’t stop playing piano until his beloved comes back to him – none of those gestures will actually make someone love you. At best, they will be embarrassing; at worst, they seem manipulative, coercive and downright creepy.
It’s hard to turn someone down in public. You’re afraid that the person will feel humiliated. You’re afraid that all the onlookers will judge you for being heartless. You say yes because you’re feeling pressured. Because you’re being publicly coerced by someone who knows exactly what they’re doing.
In the same way, when someone threatens self-harm, or even suicide if you refuse to give them what they want, you feel responsible, even when you’re clearly not. You may even see it as a sign of their love for you, rather than a sign of entitlement, mental illness or abuse.
But behaviour like that is abuse. It may not seem that way, but it is. The language of love has traditionally been all about the cruelty of the woman who won’t put out and the suffering of the man who wants her to. But really, all it comes down to is the wheedling of a naughty little boy going: “Please, Mum, pleeeese, oh pleeease, oh, pleeease, I’ll cry, I’ll scream, I’ll HOLD MY BREATH UNTIL I DIE AND THEN YOU’LL BE SORRY,” until his mother, out of sheer exhaustion, rewards him with a sweet or a toy, thereby feeding him the myth that all women will give in eventually, if pressured enough to do so.
Coercion has nothing to do with love. Public gestures are all about ego. They’re not for the recipient; they’re for the public. They’re not sincere. They’re theatre. In the same way, threats of self-harm (be that threatening suicide or just playing the piano until you drop) are not about love. They’re about manipulation, which is a form of abuse. Real love puts the other’s feelings before one’s own. Real love doesn’t want the control or coerce. Real love cares about what the other person thinks, and when the other person says: “no”, then real love backs off and shows respect.
Fairytales may be lots of fun, but they’re not a template for real life. Neither are love stories in fiction. Heathcliff may say he loves Cathy, but how does he show it? By marrying and abusing another woman; by tormenting Cathy to death and taking vengeance on her child.
“He loves me with such passion that it comes out in violence” has been the cry of abused women throughout the ages, in fiction and outside of it. And yet it’s bullshit: the truth is that a violent man is violent because he can’t or won’t control his aggression. Love has nothing to do with it, whatever he might claim. And a man who blames women for his own lack of self-control is a man who may one day attack or maim or kill a woman because he doesn’t feel accountable for his actions. He’ll say: “She drove me to it.” What that really means is: “She didn’t give me what I wanted, which in my world is unacceptable.”
It isn’t cruel to refuse the advances of someone you’re not interested in.
The moment you say no to them, your responsibility to the other person ceases.
Grown-ups don’t wheedle. No means no.
Returning unwanted gifts isn’t cruel: it’s necessary.
You don’t owe it to someone to love them, just because they made an effort to get your attention.
Theatrical, public gestures designed to make you do something you didn’t want to aren’t romantic. They’re selfish, childish and bullying.
Saying he loves you in public makes you just one of the audience. Saying he loves you in private – that’s between the two of you.
And most of all, remember this:
Women are not rewards for being a good boy. Women are not prizes at the shooting-range. Women are not there to be bought. They get to decide for themselves who they want. Men don’t get to tell them how to make their choices. That’s right: not even nice-looking men with romantic hair and a shy little smile who like to play the piano.
