<p>But why should he treat anything? I just don't see why? Maybe I've been tied down too long, but I see it as silly.</p>
<p>I guess I should be glad I never played the dating game, then...</p>
<p>_...except I like the geeky guys. As for money -geez, I dated a bunch of starving gents this summer. Hell, we were all starving, working in DC doing things we are incredibly passionate about for little or no money... but hyper-educated and doing what we love. I think my big problem was that I dated a bunch of guys in a row who were all really passoinate about free trade, so I was thinking... wow, deja vu. Then more deja vu. Said intellectual discussions were over coffee or $3 happy hour specials that were conducive to intern budgets (they still offered to pay). Yeah, those are the guys that I hang around with and date. Hence the fact that they bought smoothies or a drink, not dinner. _</p>
<p>Fair enough, that's why I said "most women want...", which leaves room for error, especially when compared to your "men don't want...".</p>
<p>_Don't find women like that? Try finding college grads. Trust me, elite schools graduate hundreds of women who are ambitious and talented but cannot seem to find men who are interested in them. They aren't running about getting knocked up or looking for a man to support them. They are complaining because the 25-year-old guys are chasing sorority chicks (true stories - yes, multiple!) who are barely old enough to drink.
_</p>
<p>Actually, its my understanding that female college grads are ones doing exactly what I was talking about earlier, wanting the "bad boys" now, but later, peace and security (after a couple of kids) so they go for the guys they shunned earlier. Frankly, I'm saving myself the time and effort and just ignoring dating altogether, like I have been my entire life, so I don't have to worry about being used or anything of the sort.</p>
<p><em>As for the comic... in freshman year of high school, all of the guys treated me like crap because I studied too much, made better grades, and had never been kissed. There was a great rumour running about that I was a lesbian. So no, it's not the same.</em></p>
<p>Well, guys like me who don't want to get married get called all sorts of names, like gay, selfish, "Peter Pans", commitment-phobes, toxic bachelors, 'afraid to grow up', the list goes on and on. The point of the comic was was that women get to shun the smart guys during high school and college, but when those smart guys are the ones who are successful and the popular ones are well...not successful, then women chase after the guys previously shunned. </p>
<p><em>I guess I should be glad I never played the dating game, then...</em></p>
<p>Agreed, it appears that there's often little/no reward, which sucks seeing how much effort gets put into it.</p>
<p>They should split it if the girl does the asking, but the guy should still offer to pay. The girl just shouldn't be cheap and accept. It seems really sweet if a guy does offer though. He should pay if he asked her out though.</p>
<p>now that kinda bothers me. If I ask, its one thing to expect me to pay. But to say that if the girl asks then the bill should be split is unfair. It should be the same either way. Im fine with whoever asks, pays but thats a somewhat twisted double standard.</p>
<p>A female perspective:</p>
<p>If all you want is to hook up with a girl, you shouldn't be taking her out to dinner or buying her anything at all. You should see what girls come to you and act nonchalant and teasing. Girls are more sexually attracted to the guys who are aloof, not overly nice, busy with their own lives. If you're a guy in college you shouldn't be sitting around paying for some girl's dinner. If you want to be a successful man who will later get a great wife then study hard, get a job, be social and make connections. If you are really craving female companionship or just want some action then go get to know as many girls as possible and hook up.</p>
<p>If you are interested having in a relationship at this point, and are lucky enough to meet a quality woman who you'd consider, then you should ask her out and pay. I wouldn't split the bill or pay for a guy unless I was in a relationship, and if one asked me to after he suggested the date I wouldn't see him again. And that's right, girls are unlikely to ask men out on dates, but if guys really don't want to pay then just don't ask a girl out. It's that simple.</p>
<p>I don't expect you women to be able to sympathize with guys and things that might inconvenience us or seem unfair to us. I've already resigned to the fact that men and women do crappy jobs at understanding one another. </p>
<p>But let's be literal about this: the majority of you expect the guy to approach you, ask you out, pay for your date, and be entertaining and funny so you'll, gasp, let us do it all over again. All you really have to do is show up and look nice. You think it's a travesty that a guy you don't know would want to sleep with you in the first couple of days knowing you, but you expect a guy you don't know to spend money on you and show you a good time. Sex is more serious than money, but it's the same thing, in a way. Your entitlement issues are the same as guys.</p>
<p>Um... Jason... my issues are that guys don't want to pay but want sex. That's backwards. I'm old-fashioned and believe that sex should only happen in marriage... to me, men wanting sex isn't different from women wanting kids. Fine to want it, but you can't get it out of everyone you date.</p>
<p>I just wonder what happened to DATING. You knonw, the guy and the girl figure out ways to treat each other. It's a signalling issue - men who don't pay are essentially saying that they want friends with benefits. </p>
<p>Cracks me up that you people keep saying that girls never treat. Don't direct that argument to me - I reciprocate waaay too often to buy that nonsense.</p>
<p>If it applies to you, I'm directing it towards you. If it doesn't, then I'm not.</p>
<p>Dating is fine, but I think women want to backpeddle and forward peddle when it's convenient for them. You can't ask for traditionalism on one hand, then ask for modernism on the other. It doesn't work like that. </p>
<p>Most guys don't mind taking their girl out on a date. That's not the point. It's the question, "what exactly are you doing for me now that I can tell will be worth my time and effort later?" that a lot of guys ask and a lot of girls don't have an answer for. </p>
<p>You have to understand that we, as guys, get a lot of messages from society...more specifically a lot of demands. We're just as confused as women are, but the difference is we don't have the luxury to sit around and wait for someone to come to us and ask us out. Well, most of us don't anyway.</p>
<p>The other way to look at it:
1. I'm from New England. "Men" there assume that modern women have sex by the third or fourth date and pay for themselves. I'm very traditional - no sex until marriage and frankly think that dating involves treating each other.
2. It's a DATE. If you don't like the girl, don't date her. If you like her - if she's sweet and funny and makes you laugh and makes you want to be a better person - then take her out on a date. That is my point throughout this entire thread. I've dated men who don't know why they are dating me, and it stinks to be the girl that you date because there's no one else around. For me, men not paying shows that they aren't interested. If they want to be friends, fine, but they shouldn't try to kiss me later.</p>
<p>ariesathena,</p>
<p>You're in law school and probably going to be a practicing attorney making a decent salary. Furthermore, you live on your own and went to top universities for your degrees.</p>
<p>I don't know how "traditional" you really are.</p>
<p>Um... so I'm supposed to put out because I have an education? Riiight.</p>
<p>Note that women have been getting educations for many years... hence Wellesley, Smith, Bryn Mawr, Marie Curie, etc. In many ways, it's so I won't have to rely on a man and essentially sell my body for half his salary.</p>
<p>Woah, I never said that, so please don't put words in my mouth. </p>
<p>I just don't know how applicable the label of "traditional" is to most women who seek it. It seems to me that traditional would be much closer to the housewife model than an independent woman who is prudent about her sexual behavior. </p>
<p>And you're using examples of EXCEPTIONS to the rule. Those women were outliers in a traditional society...not the norm. We praise them today, but many of the best educated women of eras past faced many hurdles in achieving their status that don't exist today.</p>
<p>Very true, but I don't see any correlation between sexual behaviour and academic achievement as a matter of principle. After 2004, it became such a loaded term, so I hate to use it, but it's a traditional "values" thing. ;) I don't believe in abortion; I don't believe in pre-marital sex; I don't think that divorce is right (and often think it's a result of a bad combination of elements 1 and 2); I don't believe in no-fault divorce; I hate the friends with benefits thing; I hate the idea that women who don't screw after a month are frigid or have hang-ups; and I'm not a fan of living together before marriage.</p>
<p>That, IMO, makes me pretty traditional.</p>
<p>I took a girl on a date with my Meal Card. ok, jk.</p>
<p>ariesathena, the point is it's a little hypocritical to be traditional in your dating/romantic life, but everywhere you're as modern as they come. If you can go to school for yourself, support yourself, get yourself an education...why can't you chip in on feeding yourself and giving yourself a good time with someone else? I'm really not trying to label you and girl's I've met with a similar attitude, but the more you talk, the more you just seem like women who want to be taken of. It seems like you want to be taken of with questionable and/or minimal reciprocity. I don't think I have to explain how flawed that line of thinking is.</p>
<p>No, the opposite. </p>
<p>If you're reading my posts, you simply could not think that about me. I cannot advocate any more how BOTH parties should treat each other. I just don't believe in going Dutch. Take turns! Take her out for a picnic! Cook dinner for him! Mysteriously produce tickets to a concert he wants to see! Have packages land on his doorstep!</p>
<p>My education does not, I'm sorry to say, mean that I can only be friends with benefits. Friends go Dutch. Dates treat each other. (Yes, each other. I really enjoy spoiling my boyfriends. Cooking, wine, foot rubs, picking up the check for dinner at a place that I've found, little gifts during exams, grabbing take-out Indian and going for some stargazing - I'm a romantic sucker for all of it.) Let's go over, for example, my last few Valentine's Days:
-last year - he cooked for me (he offered that or dinner at the expensive restaurant in town - my choice was the home-cooked meal); I made (for the man with a fruit fetish) hand-dipped spiced chocolate raspberries & strawberries. We had been togehter a few weeks.
-previous year: he gave me chocolate; I gave him chocolate and gourmet food basket (we're both food snobs, him probably more than I)
-previous year, second date: I showed up at his house with muffins, pastries, and coffee for him in the a.m. (I paid). He had a small plant for me (flowers die easily - he's practical). Ice skating - his idea, he paid. Indian food after - my idea, I paid. So much sweeter than splitting everything down the middle! </p>
<p>I've asked men to dances and paid for both tickets - in fact, I've never gone Dutch to a dance nor had a man pay my way. I picked up the tab most of the time when I dated seriously during my senior year at university - I had an engineering intern's salary - sometimes we went Dutch, often I paid everything, and sometimes he paid. I prefer to pay than to go Dutch - if he means more to me than a friend, I want to and enjoy expressing that. Almost exclusively, I bought when we did take-out or had champagne or drinks in a room. I don't care - in fact, I was happy to treat him, happy to use my salary for someone whom I care deeply about, and happy to find someone who appreciated it instead of using it as a way to walk all over me. </p>
<p>We first got together after finals during fall term. He made his intentions known by talking on the sly to my friends, finding my favourite kind of food, then showing up on my doorstep after my last final with a picnic for us and a movie. I do not require dinner out and a kiss on the cheek. I do not require anything - save that a man find a way to announce that he wishes to be more than a friend, not just sexually, but emotionally. </p>
<p>Of course, though, when I find it more romantic to exchange presents than to go Dutch, I'm a hypocrite who wants a man to take care of her. Um, Jason, can I tell you where to shove it? I've never said that men should pay for every date - what I've said is the opposite. I've never said that I want a man to treat me all the time - I've said, emphatically, that women should treat men as well. I do not think that men treat women because women are incapable of paying or are so ignorant that they cannot manage in the world on their own; dependence and weakness are a repulsing basis for love. I'm simply pointing out that people who date each other figure out ways to treat each other. </p>
<p>It takes a depraved and vicious mind to twist those statements into those of hypocrisy, dependence, and using another human. I do not use people, nor allow them to use me. On the first principle, I do not accept dates from men whom I do not wish to date; I offer to pay half the bill (and I do not make such offers without the intention and the desire to follow through if asked); after the first date, I treat, either by alternating who pays or via more traditional methods. On the second principle, I refuse to allow men to use me for sexual activity. </p>
<p>A refusal to use or be used; a call for treating those closest to us well; a call for both sides to acknowledge the importance of the other and to act upon that; a call against the idea that women are either spineless and needy or objects to be used for sex - that a man should look at a woman, not as an inferiour, but to acknowledge her as an emotional, psychological, and mental equal - and respect the fact that he intends to take their relationship beyond that of a friendship and cares about her more than as a cheap party girl - how is that hypocritical? My engineering degree means that I should sleep about with any man who wants sex from me but has no particular desire to date me? From what hellhole do such ideas come from, Jason? </p>
<p>As a feminist, I cannot tolerate the idea that men should always pay; as a feminist, I cannot tolerate dating a man who would only pay if I were so incapable - that he would only date me if he were my superiour - a man who is not in search of an equal but who enjoys patronizing his chosen mate. As a feminist, I cannot tolerate the idea of sex without committment. These are not mutually exclusive ideas. I live by all of them. </p>
<p>Quick back-of-the-envelope calculations show that I've expended more money on men than they on me... but that somehow means I want to be taken care of. No, I don't - not emotionally, physically, nor psychologically. I just ask that, should a man choose to date me, he manage to date me and not act like a friend in every way save asking for sex. </p>
<p>
[quote]
I don't think I have to explain how flawed that line of thinking is.
[/quote]
Yes, you do. You need to explain how you correlate a woman's legal education with the idea that she should be a slut for every man who comes along; a woman's desire to be in a relationship of mutual respect and mutual payment - just in a more romantic set-up than quibbling over who pays for the appetizer that one party ordered by both ate - with the idea that she wants to be taken care of; the idea that "equality" somehow means one party uses the other; the idea that dating and the respect it entails is inappropriate in a world with nanotechnology. </p>
<p>I see no contradiction between the well-being and best use of my mind and the well-being and best use of my body and psyche; I know that, in order to have those things myself - in any human - I must respect that of the same in others - in theory and in action. I am tremendously proud of the way I've lived my life and the way that I treat people around me. Only a depraved chauvanist would demand that I renounce either in order to have the other.</p>
<p>EXPLAIN YOURSELF!</p>
<p>^^^^^^
I think I'm in love</p>
<p>
[quote]
with the idea that she wants to be taken care of; the idea that "equality" somehow means one party uses the other; the idea that dating and the respect it entails is inappropriate in a world with nanotechnology.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Anyone who doesn't think that a relationship isn't a give-and-take situation is just drinking the romance Kool-aid a bit too much. Both parties use each other, and for good reason! But that's not a bad thing. You both have comparative advantages, and you both benefit from "trade" in those. Yes, it's important to set guidelines. However, by going into the transaction with the notion that one party is necessarily required to be the leading partner means that you're automatically marginalizing the other party...at least in my mind.</p>
<p>I think that necessitating that men pay for the first date just because we haven't found a happy medium in society yet is a half-arsed solution. It's kind of like taking a half-step back so we can move forward again.</p>
<p>Half-step backward because there's a wall in front of us. Honestly, if men didn't pursue women just for sex, things might be different. But I see nothing wrong with someone demonstrating that he is civilized.</p>
<p>
[quote]
But I see nothing wrong with someone demonstrating that he is civilized.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Again, this is the problem. You're forgetting that there's a human being on the OTHER end. How do you think it makes a decent guy like me feel to be told that I'm just a walking checkbook?</p>