A common first date problem normally surrounds who should be paying or even if the bill should be split evenly.
In a since-deleted Reddit post shared to the popular “Am I The A**hole?” subreddit, a woman explained that she met her date through a friend and despite offering to go out for coffee or a cheaper restaurant, he had insisted on going somewhere more expensive.
“It’s a nice place and I have been meaning to go. I figured worst-case scenario, I would get a chance to check out the food,” she wrote in her post about the restaurant.
She continued to recall the date, noting that she enjoyed it and had ordered “drinks, appetizers, my main, and dessert” while her date only ordered water and his main entree.
When the check came around, she made sure to ask the server for separate checks because splitting the bill is always her policy on first dates.
“I emphasized first because I thought it went well. He seemed like a genuine and pleasant guy, I was looking forward to seeing him again,” the Reddit post detailed.
However, her date ended up returning to their mutual friend to express how upset he was over not knowing her intention to split the bill. “He thought I was kind of a d*** for not telling him I was paying for my own meal,” she wrote in her Reddit post.
“The reason he only had water and a main was because he thought he was going to be paying a bunch of money for food and drinks.”
After posting, many people turned to the comments section to explain that she wasn’t in the wrong and that her date’s behavior toward her proves it is not worth scheduling a second date.
“Would it have been better to specify in advance who was paying? Sure. Would it have been awkward to bring that up before a first date? Sure. So it’s completely normal at the end of a first date to suddenly realize you had different expectations about who would pay,” one comment began.
“There is nothing at all wrong in your assumption that you’d split the cost. For him to think you were ‘kind of a d***’ for splitting the cost is absurd. It strongly suggests to me that there should not be a second date given the disrespect he’s shown toward you.”
Another commenter agreed, writing, “I think you dodged a bullet, this is a WEIRD thing to be pissy about. If he wanted to pay for you that badly, he could’ve said ‘let’s get dinner, my treat’ anytime before y’all even sat down at the restaurant.”
“Also, it sounds like he couldn’t really afford to pay for two meals at that place anyway – and I think it’s weird to pick a place you can’t really afford, then get pissy about going Dutch when you haven’t even outwardly offered to treat. In my experience, guys that get disjointed about these things have control issues.”
One commenter thought that another problem with the situation was that it was a mutual friend who told her and there could have been the possibility of the phrase being slightly misconstrued.
“I bet TA in this story is your friend. Your date might have just expressed that it was too bad he didn’t know you were going to pay for yourself, because if he knew, he would have ordered more for himself,” they wrote.
“Notice that he didn’t tell you this – he told the friend. Then your friend spread the info to you, maybe with some exaggeration, misinterpretation, or just badly phrased. If that’s what happened, the guy did nothing wrong. If you liked him, ask for a second date, and then if you want to, you can ask about the situation.”
