Should Men Hold the Door? (Or Lift the Suitcase?)

Women: If we turn down a polite offer of help, we should do so politely.

This was the second broad consensus. As noted in the original blog, we don’t have to accept an offer of aid. But since these offers are almost always well-intentioned, we should see his offer as the courtesy it is and decline in a way that returns that courtesy. As one man said, “If you really don’t want help, just say, ‘No, thank you.’ Any guy I know would respect that.”

By contrast, terse or prickly rebuffs nearly always give the impression of incriminating a well-intentioned man who doesn’t deserve it. And they introduce the perverse incentives that make that man less likely to offer his help next time.

Now, I’m going to raise another point here for us independent-minded women to consider. Candidly, we should also think carefully about whether we are letting pride get in the way of wisdom. Last weekend, Jeff and I were boarding a flight after speaking at a Midwest church, and Jeff offered to help a woman – probably 60 years old – who was struggling to lift her clearly heavy, hard-shell suitcase. She said, “No!” very sharply, and Jeff nodded and sat down. A moment later, when he was too far away to do anything about it, he watched in horror as this woman tried to heft the suitcase high, lost her grip, and nearly dropped it on the skull of the passenger directly below her. Every human on the planet needs help at times. We shouldn’t be unwilling to accept it if it is truly needed.