In her book, Why We Love, author Helen Fisher states, "Millions of years of protecting and providing for women has bred into the male brain this tendency to choose women they feel they need to save. What separates man from animal is his ability to think and reason. Just because it may be natural for men to be chivalrous, it doesn’t mean they can’t place a limit on just how far they will go.”Men try to save damsels in distress because it makes them feel powerful, in control and manly. Sometimes they are afraid of women and think they won’t be rejected if they fix a woman’s problems. They hide their inadequacies behind what looks like strength.  Such relationships are doomed.If these men really were strong, they would not be trying to save someone that appears to be a victim. They don’t realise that aside from a few circumstances beyond one’s control (acts of God, accidents, disease, etc.) one’s position in life is based on who they are on the inside, not someone or something out there. There is an axiom that says: There are no victims, only volunteers.Knights believe that if the woman gets better, she’ll become the perfect girlfriend. The only problem is that if she does become healthy, she will not want to be with someone who is so flawed that he tolerated being with a ‘broken-winged bird’. Why else do men choose damsels in distress? Dr. Laura in her book, Ten Things Men Do To Mess Up Their Lives, says other reasons for ‘stupid chivalry’ are guilt for past transgressions and lifestyles, feelings of real or imagined inadequacies, fear of the pain of abandonment, loneliness, ego aggrandisement, fears about approval and a fragmented sense of masculinity.Just because a man doesn’t acknowledge that a woman is responsible for her circumstances, it doesn’t mean those circumstances won’t come back to bite him in the butt at some future date. - www.loveforum.net