Thank you, barbara parker. Yes, it is the unyielding entitlement that I will not engage with anymore.

I am more than happy to be the polite and civil member of society I expect everyone to be. But I don’t owe strangers anything beyond that. And within the private messages of a dating service that can be as simple as the silent treatment.

It’s not a curse or a condemnation. It’s just my right of refusal.

And I prefer to think that we’re evolving toward acceptance of equality rather than submission but it is those unyieldingly entitled holdouts that will go into extinction with a bang, not a whimper.