On Accepting Chivalrous Offers....

I just read this article, written by a man addressing this problem women have in accepting chivalrous attempts. I found his analysis interesting and hadn't heard it described this way before:

“I Wouldn’t Want To Inconvenience You”

Imagine that a princess has been kidnapped by an evil ogre and locked in a dark, gloomy castle. But suddenly a brave knight in shinning armor rides up on a white horse, swims the castle moat in full armor, wins a hard-fought victory over the vicious ogre, finds her cell, and calls out, “Stay back! I am going to break down the door and free you!” Wouldn’t it ruin the story if she responded, “Oh, don’t bother. I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you.”
Sadly, this is the way many modern day “fairy tales” end. A gentleman tries to serve a girl, she responds by being embarrassed because she doesn’t want to inconvenience him, and he is discouraged from acting the part of a man.
Many girls wrongly assume that the hardest part of chivalry is the actual act of service, while in reality the hardest battle most men have to fight is asking you, not carrying your bags.
In other words, when a gentleman offers to open the door for you he has already had to conquer his “inner ogre” of self-centeredness and cluelessness. If you refuse his service because you’re afraid of inconveniencing him it’s like telling the knight who swam the moat and defeated the ogre that you wouldn’t want to “trouble” him with opening the door of your cell.
Challenge yourself to remember that a gentleman is going against the current of our culture by fighting his self-centeredness and asking to serve you. If he’s already killed the ogre, let him open the door.

http://www.therebelution.com/blog/2006/08/when-lancelot-comes-riding-part-1/