Who Picks Up The Check?

Today I’m going to talk about the messy and confusing etiquette of paying on dates, pausing first for a historical ramble about changing customs. Transitional periods are difficult. Old certainties have been destroyed, and new ones haven’t had time to grow yet. When this happens, it means that every interaction has to be negotiated and every choice is laden with meaning. You can see why people sometimes long for a return to the simplicity of earlier times, even if that simplicity had its own problems. Consider women who marry changing their names, for instance. Until relatively recently, it was overwhelmingly common for women to change their names to their husbands’ when they got married. Women who didn’t were seen as making a statement of some kind, but women who did change their name weren’t seen as taking any particular position. It was just what everyone did. I’m not endorsing it – I think that, in a lot of ways, the custom represents a historical attempt to make women’s identities invisible. But the universality of it meant that it was invisible to most people.

By contrast, some women who marry today change their names, while others don’t. Some couples hyphen both names. I even know one couple who both adopted a new family name based on a combination of their original names. Whatever you choose, someone’s going to disapprove. So it turns out I was going somewhere practical with this, albeit in kind of a roundabout manner. What I really wanted to do was apply this thinking to the question of paying for dinner. At the moment, I think paying for dinner is in one of these transitional phases, and the result is that it can be a little awkward to figure out who pays, especially on first dates. Ok, a lot awkward.

The old etiquette, which was in the process of dying out when I started dating, was very simple: the man paid. For everything, every time. This etiquette was based on a lot of assumptions, like the idea that the man would probably have a job while the woman probably wouldn’t. That my friend, was outdated long before the rule died out. Women didn’t like it because it made them feel like lesser partners, men didn’t like it because it was expensive, and people who spend too much time thinking about the sociology of dating etiquette (like, ahem...me) didn’t like it because of the creepy implications about power relations between men and women. But it had one tremendous advantage: everyone knew it and understood it. Sometimes people will stick with a system that has major flaws just because learning a new one is difficult and intimidating. By contrast, current dating etiquette is much more flexible. Some couples always split the check. Others decide who pays usually based on who’s been paid more recently. Some couples race for their wallets at the end of a meal, and whoever plunks the money down first is the winner...or loser, depending on your perspective. And still others maintain the old-fashioned rule that says that the man always pays. As an sidebar, can I ask my female readers something? When you offer to pay and a guy insists once, that’s fair enough, I suppose, because he might think you’re just being polite. But when you tell him you’re serious and he still insists, that’s really annoying, right? I always think it is when I see people do it. Am I alone here? Men often call this “being a gentleman.” Apparently they were taught some definition of “gentleman” that involves ignoring someone else’s wishes.

All of these methods, from splitting the check down to the last penny to having one partner pay for everything, have something to recommend, but you have to agree on them with your date. This means that you have to have a conversation on your first date that is absolutely inappropriate for a first date. First dates are meant to be low-pressure situations in which each party sounds the other out, looking for similar interests and the ever-elusive “spark.” The conversation about who pays for dinner is like a laundry list of first-date conversation no-no's: money, sex, politics and cultural expectations. To make matters worse, many guys have a feeling like they’re being tested on first dates – and this is not completely wrong. As a result, they may take a position they don’t really hold because they think it’s what their date wants to hear. This can be a little embarrassing if the relationship prospers, because eventually they’re likely to wind up backing away from it.

As a final complication, there’s still a little incentive for guys to adhere to the old model of paying for a date. If a man offers to pay and his date likes the traditional model, she’ll be happy. If she doesn’t, she can always propose splitting the check or say “all right, but I’m buying next time”. By contrast, if he proposes splitting the check, a more traditional woman might feel a little offended or neglected. He might feel as though he looks cheap, and men are taught from an early age to feel pretty bad about looking cheap. In short, guys are profoundly unhelpful on this point. They are liable to offer to pay whether they want to or not, because they feel like they have to. This means that women may have to take the initiative if they don’t want their date to pay for everything. As matters stand, there’s no non-awkward way to do that. The best bet, then, is to have the awkward conversation quickly and with a friendly, understanding tone, get it over with, and move on. Mention it before you get to the restaurant: “I hope you don’t mind splitting the check,” or “will you let me buy you dinner?” or something. If you’re happy to keep the traditional arrangement, say nothing. Most men will still assume that silence implies that the man pays. You may worry that your date resents having to pay for everything. And he might. But there’s no way to know without discussing the matter...