Did My Date Ditch Me Over Money?

Estimated reading time: 11 minutes

Hi Doc,

2 months ago I went out with this woman for a total of 3 dates and I just want your opinion on the reason why it ended. Basically after 3 dates we had a bit of an argument over money and I decided to stop texting her. Allow me to expand.

The first date I took her bowling and dinner. I paid for the bowling session and then for dinner we split the bill. The dinner was just chicken breast for her and a chicken burger for me — nothing fancy. First and foremost was it wrong of me to have split the dinner bill with her during a first date?

The second date we went to a local aquarium for a tour and afterwards we had dinner. I paid for the tickets for the tour and she paid for the dinner all by herself. She wanted me to send the money for the tour {her share} and first I said yes but then she did not pay me and I did not request them. The third date was movie and dinner and I paid for everything.

I asked her the week after we went to the movie if she wanted to meet me and 2 friends of mine and their partners for dinner and at first she said yes. I sent her the menu of the restaurant so that she could see what she likes as a food choice. That same day after work I went to the car wash and after I finished washing my car, I texted her. She told me come and wash my car {I don’t know if she was being serious or if she was joking} and as a joke, I told her 10 euros please. I was pulling her leg literally. This is where things took a turn for the worst.

Basically she told me that everything was about money with me and that she was giving up on me. When I asked her what she means exactly, she told me we were going on dates and splitting bills and it’s not right– she was used to a gentleman treating her right and not someone who treats her like a brother and sister by splitting everything 50/50, and what we were doing meant nothing to her. She did not want to come with me to meet my friends because she was not comfortable and if I tell her to split the check, she would freak out. I apologised although I was not sure exactly what I did wrong. We broke it off soon after.

I discussed all of the above with my friends and they confirmed that I was better off without her and that it was better that we broke up sooner rather than later. I reasoned that arguing with me over money after 3 dates was a red flag and let me point out she is a self employed business woman, works part time and drives an Audi as a daily car and she is arguing with me over splitting meals?

I appreciate your thoughts on this.

Original Gentleman

You know, this may be the first time where I’ve gotten a letter where nobody was in the wrong. That’s actually kind of refreshing. 

OK, since I already hear some folks limbering up their typing fingers in the comments, let me explain.

There’re are about as many opinions regarding ‘who pays’ on a date as there are people going on those dates, and probably twice as many opinions about what it all means.

Now, understanding this means recognizing a very important factor: dating, going on dates and all modern forms of courtship are very recent. Dating as we recognize it today is barely 100 years old – the idea of a man escorting a woman to dinner or some form of entertainment as a precursor to sex or romance really only started in the 1920s. Similarly, the “rules” around dating and what was or wasn’t expected or “allowed” varies significantly over the decades. What was commonplace in the 20s changed in the 30s and 40s with World War II; the “traditions” of of the 1950s were less than twenty years old and had far more to about the burgeoning middle class (not to mention issues of race and religion) than anything else. The invention of – and increased access to – reliable hormonal birth control and effective treatment of STIs like syphilis kicked off the sexual revolution of the 60s. 

And, of course, there’s the fact that women couldn’t have their own loans, bank accounts or credit cards without a father or husband co-signing with them until the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 – not even 50 years ago.

All of which is to say that dating is very much a game of Calvinball or Who’s Line Is It Anyway, where the rules are all made up and the points don’t matter. The “traditions” of dating were a hodgepodge of cultural pressure that only some people ever actually did – wanna guess what your gran-gran was doing on the rumble-seat of  that Studebaker? – and have about as much historical backing as the canon of the Marvel cinematic universe. 

So to answer your first question: were you wrong for splitting the bill on your first date? Yes.

And also no. 

You were “wrong” in as much as your date wanted you to pay for everything. But in objective terms, no, you weren’t because the “rules” of who pays are going to depend on who’s involved. 

Now if you were to ask me, my general rule of thumb these days is “whomever invites the other and/or picks the venue pays or at least offers to pay”. I stress offers, in part because many people feel very strongly about splitting the bill or paying their own way. For some, it’s not wanting to feel like a burden. For others, it’s wanting to establish themselves as an equal partner or a sense of fairness. And for still others, there is – even in the Far Flung Future of the Year 2023 – a sense of obligation conveyed in who pays and what they expect in return. “She ordered the lobster” – meaning “she ordered the most expensive item on the menu and now owes the man sex” was still being used as a gag in 1999.

However, there are still people who very firmly believe in the idea of “old-fashioned gentlemen”, who think that the man should pay for everything on dates. And, ok, cool, it’s nice to want things. But not everyone’s going to live by those “rules” and that’s legit. So if your date expects to be wined and dined by her beau and he’s covering all the expenses, then that’s her prerogative and more power to her. There will almost assuredly be men who will be happy to go along with it.

But that’s not you, that’s not how you roll and, shit, your bank account may not be able to roll with it even if you wanted to. Which is just as valid. 

And to be sure: the way she prefers to be treated on dates is her business, no matter the car she drives (could be used, could be a hand-me-down or a gift), her job (business owner doesn’t mean successful or ‘has money to burn’) or any other detail. If she decides that she wants an old-fashioned guy who’s going to pay for everything and going halfsies is a deal-breaker, then hey, go for it. Here’s to hoping she finds someone who’s down with that and they have many tax deductions together. The fact that this is what she wants doesn’t obligate you to go through with it, especially if “expected to pay for everything” is your dealbreaker.

Does her reaction seem a bit extreme? Kinda, and it comes off as rude as hell. However, if you were making comments about money before the “that’ll be ten euros, please” joke, then that might have been a compounding issue. If you were making snarky comments about shelling out money or having to pay for things then I could see her reaction being somewhat more understandable. Especially if she took your sending her the menu as a hint – intended or otherwise – not to get anything too pricey.

(To be fair1, I like checking out the menu before I go places too; gives me an idea about what I might want to order.) 

As it stands, however, I think you can chalk this up to “fundamental incompatibilities”, with “…and a bullet dodged” for flavor. 

Good luck.

Hi Dr. NerdLove!

I recently purchased your book on online dating, and it’s been great- but it also reminded me of a huge shift that happened in the online dating world over the last few years, namely, the desolation of OKCupid. What happened to OKCupid? Why did it become a crappier, yet more expensive version of Tinder? Are there any competitors that provide the same or similar experience as OKCupid of old? Do you have any interest in creating a platform that does what OKCupid no longer does? Dating is hard enough as is- being forced SOLELY onto swiping platforms is a nightmare!

Swiper No Swiping

Hoo man, I’m glad you’re getting a lot out of “When It Clicks”, SNS, because that came out in 2015 – practically a geological epoch in online dating terms. 

(But hey, I’m in the process of putting together a massive update – pretty much revising the whole thing – in the near future. Be sure to join the DNL mailing list to stay up to date with the latest news!)

Now to answer your question: Tinder happened. Match Group – which bought OKCupid in 2011 – created Tinder in 2012. By 2017, Tinder was the highest grossing dating app in the world. By 2020, Match Group owned over 25 dating apps, including Hinge, Plenty of Fish, Match and OKCupid, making them the proverbial 500 lb gorilla of dating apps – many of which are top-of-mind when it comes to online dating.

That ubiquity means that they can functionally dictate standards in look, feel and function for dating apps, simply by the sheer size and ubiquity. Think of it like controls in console gaming. At one point, different games within the same genre might have radically different control schemes. Over time, however, certain control schemes became the default – left thumbstick to move, right thumbstick to aim, right trigger shoots or is the accelerator, left trigger aims down the sights or hits the brake. This was, in no small part, because certain games (Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, Halo, etc.) were large enough and influential enough that they became the de facto standard, and folks expected similar mechanics in all games of the same genre. 

So it is with dating apps. Tinder is the biggest player on the block; small wonder that everyone is trying to copy their homework and not even making the pretense of acting like they didn’t. 

And to be perfectly honest: it’s not that much of a surprise. By simplifying the system to such a large extent, it makes using the app a somewhat mindless experience; you swipe right or left like you’re playing a game on your phone. That ups the amount of time people spend on the app. The more time they spend on the app, the more likely they are to pay for boosts or “gold” tier subscriptions that – theoretically – improve their odds of getting a match. 

Of course, this occurs at the cost of, y’know, making online dating an actively worse experience but you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs; any cook will tell you that.2

Now are there other dating apps that replicate the look and feel of old OKCupid? Yeah… kind of. They’re just not, y’know… dating apps. If you’re like me, and I know I am, then you might remember that OKCupid had a lot going on besides the dating side of things. There were forums. There were quizzes. There was a community.

You know where all that is now? Instagram. Facebook. Mastodon, Hive, Discord, World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XIV, Destiny 2 and more. Yes, I’m including MMOs on here; more people have gotten married because of World of Warcraft than all of OKCupid. Now, none of these are dating apps, sure… but dating is a matter of meeting people, connecting with them and building a relationship over time. You don’t want to roll into someone’s DMs on Instagram like you’re rolling up on them in the club but if friendships can be formed on IG, so can romances. 

But what about dating apps specifically? Well… you may be SOL on that account; a lot of commercial software development plays “follow the leader” because it’s a hell of a lot less of an outlay than trying to reinvent the wheel. So an app that replicates the look and feel of OKCupid Classic like you remember may simply not exist (or have a significant userbase that makes it worth the effort). The swipe mechanic seems to be here to stay. At least until a bigger fish comes along and changes the dynamic and spawns a different system entirely.

All that being said: the only constant when it comes to apps and programs is change, and living in this world means learning to adapt to those changes. Trust me, I remember when websites were hand-coded and you had to submit your website to be manually indexed on Yahoo, when you needed to buy “stamps” to message people on dating apps and online dating was a thing only losers did. OKCupid may have been awesome in its time… but sadly that time has passed and we ultimately just have to roll with it.  

The key is to remember that the mechanic of an app is less important than the end-goal: to get dates. In person. Matching isn’t the ultimate goal, any more than saying “hi” to someone at a bar is; it’s the start of the interaction. The method by which you first connect with someone is far less important than what you do after. 

Good luck.

1. To be faiiiiiiir [↩]
2. But look at what happened to the cook! [↩]