Should Men Always Pay for Dates?

Acculturated ^ | June 10, 2016 

I’ve recently had occasion to think about dating and its attendant rituals for a piece in this magazine, and so my eye was caught, the other week, by an article in the New York Post that suggested that one of the institution’s foremost traditions might be undergoing some change.

“Cheap Bros Have Found a New Way to Get Out of Paying for Dates,” the headline read. In the fashion of a modern-day fable, the piece quotes three young women who had gone out with three young men. Each guy paid for his date’s dinner or drinks, as guys who go out with women are generally expected to do. Each then used Venmo, the peer-to-peer payment app, to request that his date reimburse her share after the fact.

The women were outraged and contemptuous. “I do not have time for scrubs,” one said, speaking for all. They had expected to be treated, not treated as debtors.

I know, I know: a trend piece does not a trend make. The quirks of a few often get mistaken for the habits of many. Recall one of the genre’s preëminent cautionary tales, the 2014 Times piece that announced the return of the monocleas a men’s fashion item but failed to find more than one dude who would actually cop to wearing one, which is still one more monocle-wearing dude than I’ve ever seen. So the Post’s Venmo exposé may be just another report about a thing that isn’t a thing. But should it be one?

I confess that my sympathies are split here. On the one hand, voluntarily paying for your date’s three-dollar drink, as one of the men in question did, only to demand reimbursement the next day is an act of pure pettiness. The Post fails to mention which emojis were used to call in that particular debt, but let’s assume we’re looking at the tequila-sunrise glass paired with the smiley face with a dollar bill for eyes and tongue, the better to add insult to injury.

On the other hand, requesting repayment through Venmo underscores the absurdity of the consensus that, when it comes to the transaction known as the heterosexual date, men must bear the full financial burden, and thus wield full purchasing power. You might argue that, because women tend to spend more on personal preparation, it’s only fair that men should bear the cost of the event itself. Really, though, that’s looking at things through the wrong end of the telescope. If it’s taken for granted that the costs of the date are to be assumed by only one person, that person may feel himself entitled to whatever he considers to be a good return on his investment. A guy who seeks recourse through Venmo the morning after is a guy who doesn’t think he got his money’s worth the night before.