Paying on second date?

[notamumyet2010]

Hi everyone. Really interested to hear opinions on the following as I have 2 friends with two very different opinions.
I went on a second date last night with a guy I’ve been speaking to for about a month (OLD).
First date was drinks, he paid, I offered to get the second one he said no it was fine. I had one alcohol drink and one soft drink. He had 2 soft drinks.
We then made plans for last night. I suggested a few different types of activities as I think it’s a good way to spend time with someone and he agreed to crazy golf. He asked about dinner beforehand and I agreed and he said about getting a burger somewhere. I have to admit that wasn’t quite what I had in mind but whatever.
I booked the golf (£28) and here’s where I went wrong. I assumed as I paid for that he would pay for the burger. But although I told him I had booked the golf, I didn’t actually say I had paid. There is no way of booking it without paying and most things you pay when booking in my experience!
Anyway we walk into the burger place and it’s very clear very quickly we are ordering and paying for our own. I have to admit I was floored! This is date two-we haven’t even kissed at this point and he can’t get me a burger and fries?
Straight away I feel a massive ick. Call me old fashioned but surely the first meal you have together it’s nice for the guy to pay?
Anyway we eat and go over to the golf place. I check us in and he says “Oh you paid, if I had known that I would have got your dinner”
I didn’t know what to say at this point so stupidly just said oh don’t worry.
So all in all this second date cost me nearly £50!

So friend one-
Its my fault for not telling him I had paid for the golf, men shouldn’t pay for everything and I have too high expectations

Friend two-
He is a tight arse and if he can’t fund a burger and chips on date two, god knows what he will be like in 6 months time.

It actually doesn’t matter as I’m not going to see him again as I didn’t feel anything when he kissed me, it wasn’t a very good kiss in my mind.

But that aside-what do you lot think? And I out of order for this? I just think if he really cared about the fact I paid for the golf and my dinner he could have asked for my bank details to send me the money to cover even just his game?

Really interested to read others opinions.
Thanks :-)

Totally agree. Old fashioned when it suits and entitled when doesn’t . Seemed like a fair kind of guy who has had a very lucky escape !!

I'm curious as to whether it was a McDonalds type place or at least a nicer type of burger place? As if it was the former, I honestly wouldn't have been impressed with that anyway! To me that's where you take a date when you're 14. There's plenty of nicer options for a quick meal than McDonalds.

I agree with someone upthread who said you should have said "I've paid for the golf, do you want to get the food". I think you have to be quite assertive about these things. In fairness to him he did say that if he'd known you'd paid he would have got the food. So you should have given him the chance to do that. Not really fair to blame him for something he was unaware of.

Next time, just be straight with people. Then you can base your judgement on facts.

You’re not paying for his drinks, you’re splitting costs so paying for your own

Lol no-one mentioned having babies.

It's just a burger and a game of crazy golf.

Not everyone is desperate for the seeds of their date's loins.

There’s a subset of the younger generation I agree but it’s certainly not the majority.

I work in what was an extremely male dominated industry until a generation or two ago and I see many talented and ambitious young ladies who have nothing in common with the Botox wannabe types in reality tv

What the media shows us is a small snapshot and really isn’t society as a whole

It is not about watering and feeding. Most of women do that successfully on daily basis. It is not the cost of a cup of coffee or a drink that is the issue. It is a gesture which is relevant for the bigger picture.
However, I can somewhat agree that online dating has changed things significantly.
I don't think that numerous dates with random people on weekly basis are beneficial for one's mental health either.

This is a nuts thread.

This man paid for the first date, and then was unaware that golf had been prepaid, otherwise would have paid for the food so as to be even. He’s done nothing wrong, it’s just a communication mishap.

All these comments trying to justify requiring a man to pay for dates because women still face inequality are very strange indeed. I’d say it was more likely you’d end up with an unequal and unfair relationship further down the line if you start off on a weird transactional footing based on traditional gender norms. I always did 50/50 on dates in the past (no interest in a man trying to buy me) and am in a (very) LTR now where we respect each other as equal contributors to our life together. Housework is split 50/50, I don’t do “wife work” and he doesn’t expect me to. Future plans for maternity leave involve equal distribution of household money as well as some shared parental leave, so turns out splitting the bill on our first dates a decade ago doesn’t mean that I’ve been somehow shortchanged 😂

You want equality and equal rights - yet you expect the man to pay for the first "proper" meal? Make it make sense please.

Come back to the thread once you've been on maternity leave for 6 months +

It was a little nicer than macdonalds but still not somewhere I’d want to go on a second date.
As I’ve mentioned I totally didn’t communicate correctly about the fact I had booked and paid for the golf and that’s on me.
To the posters who said I should have paid for his meal due to him getting me 2 drinks the week before, truthfully I’m glad that didn’t enter my head as I would be even worse off now.
To confirm-he asked me on the date, he asked for suggestions on what to do and I gave about 5 ideas and he chose one. I then booked and paid for it once he chose, in hindsight that was also a mistake on my end.
Also he chose the burger place, it’s not somewhere I would have chosen tho I have grabbed food there a few times before.
Im not blind to my errors on this, however wanting to be treated on date 2 I must admit I don’t think makes me selfish, a money grabber, tight, self entitled and a few other things I’ve been called on this thread.
I totally agree that either way we are not compatible as personally I find tightness (and I do think he was being tight to stand there ordering his own food) a massive turn off.
I fully get that everyone is different and has different expectations-hell if we were all the same life would be boring. I’m going to leave this thread here as I think it’s moved on past what I intended it to be first thing this morning. Unless anyone has any burning questions to ask. Lol.
Take care out there folks and good luck to anyone in the dating pool, it’s like a shark tank out there. :-)

Absolutely. I have no idea at all who pays for what when I first met my sons dad in 1990 but I know from the day we got a joint mortgage everything was as shared. My maternity leave was saved for and we lived off of his salary. I actually out earned him in the early years.

The justification that because a hypothetical situation could happen several years in the future means every date should be financed by the man is laughable

And btw I always offer to buy the second drink on a date. If a man insists on paying it’s a nice gesture but it’s not an expectation and I wouldn’t think any less of a man who let me stand my round.

but he probably thought you were tight?

you'd not paid anything on date 1 and hadn't (as far as he was aware) paid anything for date 2, nor offered. so he just got his own burger as clearly you were not going to offer to pay for his.

And all this "he asked ME out" - one assumes as its online dating that its 2 strangers and one of them has to be the person to suggest the meet up. you are both on the site FOR DATING/Meeting.

So that doesn't mean "he asked, he pays" at all here. someone has to suggest meeting or you are just wasting your time.

Haha, yep, fair enough! I've seen enough friends go through it, that I'm not naive to the fact that maternity leave is a big change to the dynamics of a relationship, and that some reversion to trad gender roles is inevitable (he can't breastfeed alas). But I'm not expecting him to suddenly expect me to iron his pants, remember his mother's birthday, etc. And if he does, well he's going to get it thrown right back at him when he takes over on shared parental leave!

But back to the issue at hand: how would it be better if he'd paid for our first dates? The argument on this thread is that if the man doesn't pay for the first dates, then he's some sort of skinflint who will leave you scraping together pennies during maternity leave. But, as I've said, if it happens for us, we'll be sharing finances, so that is not my experience (nor the experience of any of my friends, who also would have gone dutch with their now partners). He's also, more generally, a very generous person.

The alternative position here is that having your drinks/dinner paid for is advance compensation for getting the shitty end of the gender stick in some hypothetical future family. Are women who are fed up ironing pants and remembering MILs' birthdays and staying off work with sick children really feeling like things are any better for them because they got some free dinners several years ago? Or feeling extra resentful because they did rounds in the pub?

My point being, this is a non issue. Going 50/50 doesn't tell you anything about how generous they are as people. Getting your dinner paid for does absolutely nothing to even out ongoing inequality.

If OP, or others, want to write off men for not paying for them, crack on. You can decide not to date someone for whatever reason. There are still some men who want to pay for women, so find them instead. The 50/50 men probably don't want to date you either because you've got different perspectives on some core values, in the same way I would get the ick from a stranger expecting to pay for me. The 50/50 men and women can then pair up and everyone can be happy. Problem solved!

If I was going on a first/second date with someone I already knew…so a friend, colleague or someone from a wider social circle then I’d be more okay with them paying if they initiated the date. I’d still want to pay for the next one though.

A stranger from online dating where we’re both sussing each other out I would always expect 50-50. And low cost dates for the first few. I don’t expect anyone else to fund my dating journey or social life.

Yup, this.

however wanting to be treated on date 2 I must admit I don’t think makes me selfish, a money grabber, tight, self entitled and a few other things I’ve been called on this thread

What if he wanted to "be treated" ?

It seems you were comfortable letting him do all the paying on Date 1
It seems pretty reasonable to me that he doesn't want to set a precedent for him paying for you all the time, had there been a 3rd date.
The only 'tightness' I am seeing here, is coming from you, not him.

I think you need to be clearer in your communication. From my perspective (but appreciate that the perspective of someone who earns very high six figures I have more disposable income than most women), I would never allow anyone to pay disproportionately for dates while you are still getting to know each other. I think the first few dates should be shared cost wise and when you are in a relationship with someone where you know the financial situation etc you can decide who treats the other more often. You can also do free activities eg galleries and museums are free, you can do a coffee or bakery crawl where you take turns to pay.

however wanting to be treated on date 2 I must admit I don’t think makes me selfish, a money grabber, tight, self entitled and a few other things I’ve been called on this thread

lol. I’m cringing so hard for you right now. And if he wanted to be treated you’d have called him all those things, why the hell should he treat you. You’re not even seeing each other again, you’re not some long term partner, you’re some random he went on a couple of dates with.

This is besides the point but why people say ‘macdonalds’ and not ‘mcdonalds.’ It really annoys me😂

Well that burger cost £20 so I hope it was somewhere better than Maccy D's😁

I think he's a bit of a shit for not paying something towards the crazy golf when he found out you'd paid.

I hope you enjoyed the golf at least!

If a man "insisted" on paying on a date I really wouldn't be impressed. I don't need or want a provider, thanks. I have a job. Always have, always will.

Quite.

It is a minefield out there.
On the first couple of dates, everything should be even - either pay for your own, if a meal, or buy a round each in turn if it is drinks, or pay for yourself if you are doing an expensive activity. No-one owes anyone anything at that stage.
Each of you might date several people over a few months - why should only one person be spending money at the 'getting to know you' stage ?

The irony is OP counted every Penny, shared the precise cost of her date and gave us all her friend opinions. She is deluded to the fact she is tight and entitled

Precisely, she actually sounds like a good match for this fellow.

Either she’s a little skint and that’s what’s really behind this, very tight, or a complete legend in her own mind who genuinely believes she’s such a star she should be paid to turn up on dates.

i suspect it’s the first one, she’s skint, so is making this daft play about how basically strangers should be treating her, the clue is she’s counted every penny. I suspect if she could have booked the golf and not paid she would have.

but why not own it, say I’m skint, I can’t afford to date really and would prefer it if men paid for me.