The Age of the Gentleman — that semi-imaginary time we all have in our heads where men you actually wanted to sleep with wore fedoras and treated ladies like ladies — might be over, but there’s no reason it can’t come back next year. We just need to set up a few ground rules for being a modern Cary Grant /Paul Newman/Ken Cosgrove. We’ll all be drinking scotch and wearing linen suits again in no time.

1. Have a signature drink that you both can make at home after a long day’s work, and order with effortless swag at any bar you happen to be in. (This means no complicated ingredients and easy substitutes. If it’s a whiskey soda, so be it.)

2. Keep all negative social media activities to a minimum, because no gentleman engages in things like Twitter fights or passive aggressive Facebook statuses. It’s just not classy.

3. Hold doors open for everyone, because that’s just a nice thing that you do.(Fagan, 2013)

4. Always text back promptly, even if it’s to let someone down gently. The worst thing you can possibly do to someone is leave them hanging so they can torture themselves with worst case scenarios.

5. Own and be able to sufficiently rock at least one suit. Suits are the greatest untapped resource that most men have access to, and can take even the most slovenly 4 Chan dweller into slick presentability. You owe it to yourself to know your way around a suit.

6. Master a good handshake, so that you are neither depositing your limp sea slug of a hand on someone else’s palm, nor crushing them with your Rock-Biter-from-the-Never ending-Story force.

7. Never attempt to explain, under any circumstances, why a  cat call should be considered a compliment.

8. Do not be afraid of accessorizing, because a pair of nice shoes or a classy watch can Upgrade U almost immediately, as explained in the Beyoncé song.

9. Do not refer to things as “gay” that aren’t homosexual human beings. People who call things “gay” as a pejorative are truly the raisins in the trail mix of life.

10. Do your best not to put others down in order to elevate yourself; it reeks of the people who categorize men by their Greek letter status.

11. Call your mother, even if you have to set up a Google calendar reminder to get yourself to do this.

12. Know how to cook at least a few good meals, because a) there is nothing worse than guys who assume it’s up to the woman to do all the cooking, b) there is nothing sexier than a dude who can cook, and c) everyone deserves to feed themselves well.

13. Make good eye contact, but not so much that it gets into “I’ve been watching you from behind your dumpster” levels.

14. Don’t corner people at house parties with your political views (and this goes double — nay, triple — for libertarians, as  you guys are the most egregious culprits).

15. Erase the word “slut” from your vocabulary.

16. Treat every woman with the same amount of respect and humanity that you would your mother, sister, or daughter and think about why there might have been conditions on how you treated them in the first place.

17. RSVP.

18. Always put a little money away at the end of each month, and not because you’re saving for anything in particular.

19. Be up-front about your finances, because it’s unfair for anyone to believe in the outdated gender roles of “the man should pay for everything.” As long as you’re working hard and trying your best, you deserve to be honest.

20. Do not sleep with anyone who wants a relationship from you that you are not prepared to give. Using their affection to get something from them physically is easy, but it makes you a bad person.

21. Learn how to dance, at least a bit.

22. Never underestimate the great value of unexpected flowers on a day that is otherwise nothing special, especially in  long-term relationships.

23. Don’t be disdainful of selfies, guys have just as much a right to look and feel good about themselves as anyone else. If you want a selfie, take a selfie! Just don’t be a dick about other people who like to do it, too.

24. Be compassionate, and know that you are allowed to experience the full range of human emotion. Where the gentleman of our grandparents’ generation might have prided himself on keeping all of his feelings in check for fear of seeming ‘feminine,’ a real gentleman knows that the best thing about him is his ability to be kind and empathetic. Everything  else — yes, even the suit — is just icing on the cake

(Fagan, C.) 24 Rules For Being A Gentleman In 2014. Retrieved from thought catalog.