This is a question a friend asked on Facebook a few weeks ago. It's been many years, ok, decades, since I dated. I read through the conversation wondering how much dating etiquette had changed. The general consensus was either the man, or the person that initiated the date. This pretty much agreed with the dating norms of my memory.
This morning, as my mind has a tendency to do, came back to this subject with a new thought. When I go out with friends, there is no expectation that anyone is going to pick up the tab. It happens, but it is not expected. So why the difference when it's a "date." What is the difference between a date and friends getting together? A date is an opportunity to get to know each other, to see if there is mutual interest/attraction, it also has potentials that friends don't, usually. But to me that seems all the more reason, especially in the beginning, that the date should be dutch. Why should men be expected to pay for every opportunity to meet a woman? Especially, in this day and age of equality. If one person makes considerable more money than the other, then a place affordable to them both should be agreed upon. And the whole "potential" thing, if a man is buying because he is expecting sex, this raises all kinds of issues. Buying a meal, even a couple of meals, in expectation of sex, is treating a woman in a degrading manner.
I don't expect to be dating, but I think I have concluded that I would be paying my own way--at least as long as it was casual.
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