"Not doing it" - A better option ?

My apologies to those of you who may find my little reflection too harsh and possibly one-sided. I was initially reluctant to post this as an entry here. However, I’ll not compromise by deviating from my true intent and I urge you to take this as an expression of my values.

Just a week before the Lunar New Year, I managed to meet up with 2 friends. It was a casual meet up with the usual excessive food and drinks from a nearby market. One of them has been seeing a new guy for the past couple of weeks after her breakup with her ex-boyfriend then started to make comparisons on how the previous was ‘better’ than the present. She cited how her previous man would never fail to make the extra effort to open the taxi door from her side and push or pull door handles in shopping malls in any given situation just for her convenience of not laying a finger. I was puzzled and asked her what these ‘acts’ mean to her. She did not answer my question directly but said that it’s nice to have someone doing these little things for her. Obviously, It mattered much to her that her present suitor didn’t live up to that expectation of hers, otherwise she wouldn’t have brought it up.

I think it’s important that we have the ‘right’ intentions to back our every action before engaging in an act at all. So what if it’s a ‘nice’ or ‘sweet’ gesture but the person executing it harbors warped ideas or simply did it for the sake of doing it just for ‘showmanship’. Getting back into perspective, to me it’s clear that sometimes “the not doing it” option is a more dignified one.