Should a man pay for the first date?

A personal and structural examination of dating strategy in the age of bio-libertarianism

i. Risk tolerance in the monogamy market

My friend S recently told me about a guy who didn’t pay on the first date. They split the check, which cost him the second date. She rationalized that she wanted to be pursued, and a guy not paying indicated a lack of seriousness about her.

He tried to defend splitting the check by appealing to fairness: men have no guarantee of a second date, and shouldn’t women want equality in dating as they do in every other area? The hidden argument is that paying for every first date places an undue burden on men.

Dating is a high-stakes game shaped by biological instincts and economic incentives, despite our insistence that it’s about preference. But why does the question of who pays carry so much symbolic weight in the first place?

I came home and asked my partner what he thought, and unsurprisingly, he agreed with my friend. According to him, paying on the first date is a way to maximize one’s chances of getting to a second date. Men who don’t pay are more…