First dates... splitting the bill.

[NovemberMorn]

Is it unreasonable to expect the male to pay the full bill on a first date dining out?
I watch the programme 'First Dates' on TV, and it amazes me how, in this day and age, so many women either don't offer to split the food bill, or mutter something half-heartedly as the man gets his cc out, obviously not expecting to pay a penny.

I think having parity is better for women. No one with a sense of having bought the other person.
Equality is bound to bring pluses and minuses to both sides. If you want equality you have to accept what you think of as negatives too

How does splitting a bill make a man look weak? How does it make anyone look weak?.

It is utterly batshit to go on a date expecting a man will get you alone in order to rape and muder you. That is a this dog bites, ergo all dogs bite argument.

If you feel that way don't go on the date.

Before anything further is said I've encountered serious SA a number of times, and DV. That men can do that is nothing to do with paying 50:50. It's using emotive possibilities to shore up your stance.

I'm not saying a man paying the bill is any kind of protection. I'm saying dating between men and women isn't ever going to be truly equal. It's not a job interview.

If he's had a 50 quid meal and yours was 25 just pay for your meal.

But if you want to quibble over £1.83 .... should you be going on a date?

No it really is an interview, that's the point of a date.

I wouldn't want someone to pay for me on a first date. At that stage, you don't really know them. You have no idea if anything romantic will develop. You're equals. The whole dynamic of a man paying simply because he's a man feels off to me. It puts him in a position of power and you may feel you owe him something.
Once you're actually a couple then it's different. You have feelings for each other, you're in a romantic relationship. It feels right to me that youd treat your partner once you'd actually developed feelings for each other. In that situation I'd be happy for my boyfriend to treat me. I'd also treat him sometimes. It's done out of affection/romance/love. None of this exists on a first date.

I answered your question and explained why it creates confusion but you're just being awkward.

Because it's creates confusion of how men approach paying the bill if there are some woman who prefer not to owe a man anything to another woman who classes it as a red flag if the man doesn't pay the bill.

Do you make this clear though on the first date? If so, it's perfectly reasonable but if the guy is second guessing or eventually falls into the routine of always picking up the bill it's not great.

Who seriously on the first date discusses how bills will be split if entering into a relationship?

And if a man ‘falls into a routine of picking up the bill’ then at some point a woman would say ‘no I’ll get this one’

You seem to be looking at a problem that isn’t actually there

Usually, I offer to pay my share, if they insist on paying I immediately say thank you and that I'll get the next one and then we go from there. I make it clear I am only accepting them paying because I can and am happy to reciprocate.

If they don't want a second date thats their problem, but usually those ones dont offer to pay anyways!!

If a man asked me on a date, then yes, I’d expect him to offer. If I didn’t want to see him again then I would insist on paying my half. If I did plan on seeing him again, I would accept and then pick up the tab on the next date.

So dating has nothing to do with women ending up paying for their own maternity leave but everything to do with women ending up on OnlyFans
Righty ho!!!

And yet i havent had an answer as to why i should bankroll a mans alcohol

Do they?

"The Channel 4 show has now returned for its 21st season, marking a whole 10 years of first daters being greeted by Fred Sirieix at the doors.
LADbible spoke to some of the OG stars about how the food is paid for as the TV restaurant moves from Manchester to Bath.
Barman Merlin Griffiths wasted no time in clarifying that the daters absolutely pay for their food – you don’t actually get to tuck into a full-on free meal while you’re being filmed attempting to flirt.
“You can't comp the whole thing - if you give people a free ride, they start doing strange things, they don't act like themselves,” he says.
“In order for it to be a real date and a genuine experience then paying is part of it.”
Fred chimed in too: “It's recreating what happens in a real restaurant because we are in a real restaurant, and it's a real date.”

They get a £25 meal allowance per person so £50 a couple.

This isn’t logical - it’s like saying “It creates confusion for a man if some women like going to the cinema as a date and some prefer a coffee shop so they can chat. How is a man supposed to know what to do?”.

There’s no magic formula a man must follow that equals dating success - everyone has different preferences.

If a man wants to pick up the bill on a date, he offers. If the woman responds saying she’d rather split it, he splits it. Even if a woman prefers to pay her own way, she’s not going to be offended by a man politely offering. But if he doesn’t want to pay, he shouldn’t offer.

@JenniferBooth Surely you get mat pay? And there's shared parental leave these days which is great for working parents - hubby and I did it and it was amazing! And yes, before you ask, I was breastfeeding 👍

Who has told you that you have to do that?

But not everybody wants a traditional relationship.

So a “male provider” becomes moot (although ability to pay for a cheap date is not an indicator of somebody’s ability to provide.)

Why does it make a man look weak when a bill is split?

I'm mid 40s so the last person I dated was DH and when I met him in the 00s, he paid for all of the dates, he wasn't particularly poor so not a problem money wise. In all honesty I don't remember paying for many if any dates prior to him but I think things were different then. I am sure I paid for some things.

At one point I worked in a pub that had lots of fishermen frequent it and I didn't hear bad stuff about women, certainly lots of alpha male behaviour like fights etc. But that was between each other. I think men have just hugely changed and it is no longer appropriate to behave in that way i.e dating or fighting casually which can only be a good thing.

I’m a woman and don’t worry about any of those things with a man I am dating. Why would I?

This is true. So I suppose it's good to weed out who you're not compatible with. If I was single I would not want a man to pretend to be something he's not...if he'd rather split, I'd prefer the honesty so I could make a choice that I wouldn't want to see him again. Everyone's a winner then!

That’s the norm when eating out. Any “embarassment” is just your own.