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 likely to strike out completely. What seems like risk aversion — not paying under the assumption that most first dates won’t lead anywhere — decreases the chances of any second dates. Paying for all your dates in a given week may not land you a relationship, but at least one woman might agree to a second date, increasing the odds of a long-term partnership (or sex, at least).

ii. Stated and revealed preferences

This argument convinced me because all around me, I see evidence that neither sex has transcended the reproductive incentives we evolved with, even in the six decades since birth control decoupled sex from marriage. Women still view the first date as a signal of whether a man is willing to provide resources. And I get why even the most feminist-leaning women still expect a guy to pay: we want selective equality, and I don’t even mean that with contempt. I recognize biological reality. The pressure to reproduce shapes human behavior more than we like to admit, so our stated and revealed preferences don’t align.

Yes, it’s annoying to pay for first dates when there’s no guarantee of commitment, and yes, many women wield feminism selectively. Here’s one way to gauge a woman’s seriousness: if the date continues, there should be at least one instance of reciprocity — like her paying for a round of drinks after dinner. If she pays for nothing during a multi-part date, that’s also a red flag.

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iii. Bio-libertarianism and evolution

The clash of economics and biology has created failing dating strategies. I’m almost finished with Mary Harrington’s Feminism Against Progress, where she frames marriage as the natural outcome of women’s historical monopoly on sexual access and men’s control of resources (and violence). She argues that the sexual marketplace has been deregulated in the “bio-libertarian” age, and men with resources no longer have much incentive to commit. Their evolutionary drive is to optimize for offspring, not one mate.

Instead, women often spend time and energy on a diminishing pool of high-status men unlikely to commit rather than choosing men lower on the status scale who might. Harrington convincingly argues that the sexual revolution has primarily benefited the top 1% of men at the expense of most men and most women.

Women still seek men with status, often indicated by resources and signaled through spending. That instinct is baked in because, for most of human history, women needed those resources to raise babies who required extraordinary care. Women’s ability to earn money doesn’t erase that tendency; if anything, it sharpens the selection process.

As men continue to lose economic ground to women (given women’s higher rate of degree attainment), more of us are competing for a shrinking pool of “acceptable” men. But the incentives for those men to commit are lower than ever because they can still get sex without strings.

Women lose the most. Those who want kids are struggling to find committed partners with resources. And most women aren’t wired to “marry down,” and we shouldn’t expect them to, either.

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I’ve been thinking about dating a lot lately — watching my female friends struggle with men who aren’t serious and hearing from men who can’t find women who hold themselves to the same standards they expect from men. Our culture encourages maladaptive behaviors for family formation, regardless of whether you plan to have children. The decoupling of sex and marriage is, I think, at the root of this, though I wouldn’t want to go back to a world without birth control or no-fault divorce, either.

Am I trying to avoid the reality of tradeoffs? Probably. I’m a geriatric millennial woman raised in the era of “having it all.”

But everything in life requires tradeoffs. And one major cause of the single-thirty-somethings phenomenon is our resistance to pragmatism. You can’t always have everything. The modern conception of marriage as a vehicle for self-actualization rather than reproduction makes the process unnecessarily high-stakes. Those who don’t want children might be even more enthralled by the myth of the perfect partner because there’s no biological clock forcing a choice. So, we all chase unrealistic standards, and most of us lose.

Appendix

i. Launch of paid subscriber benefits

I won’t bore you with an explanation; it felt time for me to do this.

If you convert to a paid subscription for $50/year (a mere ~$4/month) you get:

1. An Argument Clinic-type hangout every month where you can bring topics for dissection to work through with others. Our ideas are sharpened when we think publicly. I know some of you are aspiring public intellectuals who could benefit from this.

2. A subscriber writing post every other month. I will do the first in May and send out a call at the end of this month.

3. A monthly mailbag post.

ii. From the archives: I had a column in my college paper

I recently opened my memory box and was tickled to look back at a more innocent version of myself from the fall of 2007. The Hare Krishna community I grew up in served vegetarian lunch on campus daily; it was known as the cheapest and most delicious lunch for students. The College Republicans invaded it one day, and I was angry.

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“Vegetarianism not a political issue”

Last week I was trying to enjoy my tofu spaghetti on the Plaza of the Americas when I smelled something rather foul. It was the stench of barbecued animals that I often go to Krishna Lunch to avoid.

As a vegetarian, Krishna Lunch is the most appetizing option on campus for me. The members of UF College Republicans were extremely tactless to host their “People Eating Tasty Animals” barbecue right next to it.

Vegetarianism is a personal choice that people make for various reasons. I’m a religious Hindu, and I was raised vegetarian. The sight and smell of meat disgusts me. I don’t attempt to convince people to be vegetarian, partly out of frustration from the senseless arguments I’m forced to get into.

But for the group to purposely host its barbecue where there was undoubtedly a large concentration of vegetarians made it seem callous. It also did nothing to help the obvious polarization between liberal and conservative groups on campus.

By holding their barbecue on the plaza, the group obviously hoped to attract attention. Not all of it was good. One of my friends, a member of the College Republicans, was offended. I wasn’t aware that Republicans can’t be vegetarians, but that’s exactly what the barbecue implied.

And I didn’t realize that vegetarianism was a political issue until I saw this insensitive display. Since when are vegetarians and meat eaters classified as conservative or liberal? That’s a stereotype that the College Republicans are too dense to look past. They only made themselves look closed-minded.

The College Republicans realized — as most people do — that the plaza is generally a liberal-friendly area because of Krishna Lunch, which attracts the so-called “hippies.” Turlington Plaza is the conservative area I generally tend to avoid. I don’t particularly enjoy being told I’m going to hell every day on my way to class, and I’m sure most students agree.

This is an example of enduring divisions that neither side wishes to end. Both sides attach stereotypes to each other and continue to make whatever political culture that exists on this campus even more foul.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals may not be so ethical, but most people would be hard-pressed to think of an argument against vegetarianism. Animals raised for food in this country live in horrendous conditions that make their lives completely miserable.

In the past, cows, herbivores by nature, were forced to eat meat. And chickens are often raised in cages that don’t allow them to move an inch. They are fed hormones to make them grow in unnatural ways that subsequently affect our health — the childhood obesity epidemic has been linked to animal growth hormones. The College Republicans might be ignorant of these facts.

If the College Republicans really want to protest PETA and its animal treatment record, their time would be much better spent educating students about the meat and dairy industry’s dreadful treatment of livestock.

If the group insists on holding such events, it will undoubtedly continue to lose respect on campus and perpetuate the cycle of undignified political dialogue. But then again, I don’t recall the UF College Democrats ever going out of their way to offend large groups of people.