Money and Dating: Who Pays for What?
By Nina Atwood
You’re sitting at dinner, your second date, and the waiter places the bill on the table. Your date continues talking, not giving the bill so much as a glance. Time passes and that bill is still sitting there. You are beginning to think that he’s deliberately ignoring it, perhaps hoping you’ll pay. What do you do?
What does it say to him if you pick up the bill and pay? What does it say to him if you refuse to acknowledge the bill, forcing him to eventually pay? What about the guy who insists on paying – what does that say to you? What about the guy who wants to split the bill every time – what does that say to you?
Who says money isn’t important when it comes to love?
The reality is that money – earning, accumulating, spending, investing, saving, and wasting it – is a vital part of life. So it makes sense that money issues are a part of dating, and it starts with who pays.
I’m a thoroughly modern, liberated woman. I grew up in the fifties and sixties, and I decided early in my life that I would learn how to support myself so that I would never find myself trapped in a bad or abusive marriage. I’m proud of that decision – it has served me well.
Early on, being the liberated career woman that I am, I thought that splitting the check at dinner put me on a basis of equality with the men I dated. I also believed that paying the entire tab on early dates put me in a non-obligatory position with men. All good thoughts. But it didn’t produce good outcomes. Now, I have a different belief.
A man’s willingness, make that eagerness, to pay the tab at dinner says something about him, but not necessarily the full story. It does rule out a few things. One thing it rules out is the guy who’s into testing a woman, leaving the tab on the table to find out if she will pay, resenting her if she doesn’t. It also rules out the guy who lacks a generous spirit, who is unwilling to spend discretionary income freely. Most important, it rules out the guy who’s not that into you, unwilling to spend money on you because he’s not really pursuing you for a relationship. Then there’s the guy who is looking for a successful woman to latch onto so that he doesn’t have to work. Ick.
The one thing it doesn’t rule out, and you have to assess in other ways, is the guy who seeks control over a woman. This guy looks generous at first, but in reality is spending money because it puts him in a one-up position and the woman in a one-down, financially dependent position.
Bottom line girls: don’t pick up that tab! Not early in a relationship. Wait for his response – you’ll learn a lot about his character. But keep paying attention, because that’s just the beginning of the story.
Entry Filed under: Dating
1 Comment
1. Dawn | August 24th, 2007 at 4:31 am
I was dating a guy who practically had me pay for nothing, and this had been going on for a month. Granted that I already felt pushed into an obligatory position being 9 years younger (and still fairly young at that), you couldn’t imagine how more hopeless I felt when he was so adamant about paying every time, on grounds of being a “Southern gentleman.” By the end it was obvious that he wanted something from me that I wasn’t ready to offer, and even making a complete, clean and quick break was difficult to get out of because of the steep power difference between us. That being said, what should one do (and how should they do so) as soon as they notice that they’re possibly being controlled?