A Girl Can Invite A Boy Over For Dinner, But She Can't Ask Him To Take Her Out

I was watching Father Knows Best and Betty is trying to get her hooks into a young man.

Then Father is tired and doesn’t want to have company for dinner. But Betty explains that this will be their first date and says:

A girl can invite a boy over for dinner, but she can’t ask him to take her out

Fine advice for the 1950s but does it hold true today?

So can a girl in high school ask a boy out? Of course they can but is it sociably acceptable to do so now-a-days?

More so than it was then but it’s still rare.

When you are told all your life that men will gladly have sex and that women can get a man at the drop of a hat, and then you ask someone on a date, and they say no, it’s pretty devastating.

It’s not until much later that you learn that neither of those things are true.

Guys don’t “take me out” anywhere. We “go out” together.

So yes, it’s fine for a woman to do the asking, assuming she and the male approach the situation as equals (both intend to pay for their own dinner/drinks). But it would probably be rude to ask a guy out and expect him to pick up your tab. I wouldn’t know, since I always pay my own way.

Uhmm, I’m pretty sure that one of your statements is true. Most men will gladly have sex. The part that you left out is that they won’t gladly have sex with just anybody.

I don’t think anyone can ask someone else to take them out. You can offer to take someone out or to make them a meal, but it seems gauche to ask someone to buy you dinner.

There’s a third possibility here: you can ask someone out on the understanding that each will pay their own way. That’s more likely to happen with friends than with possible “dates”, and it’s also more likely if the girl does the asking than if the boy does the asking, but “going dutch” is perfectly acceptable social behaviour.

Right. The message isn’t that a girl can’t ask a boy out, it’s that a girl can’t ask a boy to TAKE her out.

OK: “Bobby, can I take you out to dinner on Saturday?”

Not OK then, not OK now: “Bobby, howsabout you buy me dinner on Saturday?”

Usually, if I want to go out with a guy and he isn’t being forward and asking, I’ll say, “Hey, want to grab dinner XYZWHENEVER?”

Then, I always bring enough money to cover both meals (because, I mean, I did invite him), but usually the guy will insist on paying anyway.

Yeah, works too. I agree that that’s more something friends would do than dates.