The Pursuit of Women:
Romantic or Predatory?
ILLUSTRATION BY EVE BURKE-EDWARDS
By Emilia Andrews
It’s a common trope in books, films and TV shows that women are pursued by men out of romance - think Ted and his blue horn throughout the nine season long pursuit of Robin in ‘How I Met Your Mother’. It tends to go a little like this: man asks woman out, woman says no, man continues to pester woman until she eventually says yes, as she is so wooed by his relentless advances and grand romantic gestures. There are times when the commitment shown by this can be considered romantic, but this is situational and dependent on how the person being pursued actually feels.
Of course, this idea of man pursues woman primarily applies to heterosexual couplings and the dynamic is likely to vary in LGBT+ relationships, but the notion itself remains extremely prevalent in our culture and inevitably feeds into our ideas about the dating world. From an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense that a man would need to pursue a woman in order to prove his worth and demonstrate his commitment. Like a peacock flashing its feathers, a man would have to prove that he had the desirable traits that would make him a good breadwinner for any children he may potentially father.
