I don’t necessarily consider ghosting rude, but yes at least before the 1980s when answering machines became common and could be used to screen calls, it was typical you would make up some genericized excuse to politely decline an undesired second date.
Again, not a lot of scientific data in the dating world, but my opinion as a long time dater is statistically it is highly unlikely an appreciable percentage of “dates I really really really super seriously thought went well”, that didn’t result in second dates, was because of someone looking for a free meal.
It never occured to me that anyone not interested in a second date was just in it for a free dinner. I first thought it was because I was too repulsive/boring to warrant a second date, but came to realize that I was (and still am) very bad at reading people.
As far as I can tell, he was responding to you, because you were perceived as defending what needscoffee said. In fact, it reads to me like he didn’t notice you were two different posters. He had asked one poster for an explanation, and you gave it, rather than them. I actually didn’t realize it at first, either.
I do think his reaction went too far. But, at the same time, this is a rather touchy subject. Being rejected sucks. Plus, in general, I’m not a fan of attacking someone for being “too touchy.” I can’t think of any situation where that actually helps. It seems to me no different than when someone says people “need a tougher skin.”
I am not super familiar with dating, as I’ve not done it in a while. But the situation described in the OP definitely seems to me to be more likely to be this dine-and-dash phenomenon, due to two factors: She rejected his initial date offer and changed it to a meal, and then didn’t even offer to pay. While one or the other would be just out of the norm (in the modern dating scene), putting both together seems more like the date was more interested in the free meal.
I’ve always understood the point of the coffee date to be the low commitment. It doesn’t last as long, so you can plausibly leave sooner. And the cost is lower–as the norm even back when I was dating seemed to be that you should be prepared to pay for your own stuff.
It just seems rude AF to me to effectively ask someone out to a dinner date and then not even pay your own way. That makes it seem to be more about getting free food.
What “tough spot”? I would assume the restaurant would just do whatever they normally do when a customer has no money. Which might range from taking down their personal information from their drivers license to calling the police if they actually thought they were being scammed. You BOTH showed up without any money or credit cards?
It’s not really that complicated: you can’t suggest to someone else to take you out—that should go without saying—and when you invite someone to a restaurant, the only “proper” arrangement is to pay for everything, including the waiter’s tip, in advance (i.e., leave your credit card, or sign the club check), so that there is no awkwardness with the check being presented and you paying, in front of your guests’ faces, for what they have eaten (embarrassing, plus then there is the inevitable argument as everyone insists on paying their share).
That is a kinda tough spot. I used to own a restaurant, and it was always tricky when it happened. You’d have to gauge quickly on the spot whether you believed the customer 100%, when you were bullshitted but it didn’t matter, when you were dealing with a scam artist, how much $ the whole deal was over, whether it was worth it to take down the customer’s ID info and followup, but in this spot particularly, when customers themselves disagreed about who was responsible for the check, you really didn’t want to get into it. I mean, if he says he doesn’t have the money but SHE says she has the money but he was supposed to pay for everything, and HE says “No, that’s wrong” am I supposed to get in the middle of the discussion? And where’s the line that I want to call a cop to file “theft of services” charges? $10? $100? $75? It’s a very messy spot that, fortunately, rarely presented itself, and every time it did, it was different circumstances.
I’m totally turned off by the idea of dating being transactional. In my earliest dating years, the environment I was in (college / government town in the midwest) supported the idea of friends going out for dinner, or first dates doing this too, with no further expectations. Just getting together for a nice time.
Moving to the west coast, I was dismayed to find that many of the women I asked out immediately assumed they had to get into a transactional mode, i.e., they couldn’t go out with me unless they were ready and willing to “pay” for the dinner through sex. I wasn’t yet ready to go there, and was perhaps naively assuming that my paying for dinner should be seen as merely a gift to improve relations. But there it was. The whole thing started to feel tawdry and stressful.
So, I was probably the perfect candidate for a dine and dash type dupe, but fortunately I did not actually have that happen to me.
It’s straight out of Emily Post, and while some of her advice was strictly for squares even in the 19th Century, I cannot disagree with her, having had the “My treat… No, let me pay half, I insist…” conversation many times, as well as people whipping out their credit cards and/or signing the check making sure the other person cannot peek and see the total, in this case I agree with her.
I am a very prolific dater. When I do the asking, I pay for the meal. In the very rare occasion where they offer to pay half, I immediately accept since I am not into playing games. To be fair, I am typically a fair amount more well off and older than my dates so there is a bit of an imbalance. Still, we clearly live in very different worlds.
The slightly updated Miss Manners version still recommends the maneuver where the host claims the bill in advance, but does not mandate it. The guest is supposed to thank the host but not try to retroactively claim hosting or sharing responsibilities by means of prolonged check-grabbing squabbles.
Both of those are correct etiquette, as you probably already know: the inviter by default is the host of the dinner and therefore responsible for paying for it. But if the guest voluntarily suggests sharing the expense, the host may accept or refuse that offer as they prefer.
Personally, I think the standard procedure for dating ought to be strictly everybody-pays-their-own-way. Providing hospitality to invited guests at one’s own expense is charming behavior, but it was traditionally practiced in social circles where it worked reciprocally, with the guests on one occasion inviting the hosts to be their guests on the next occasion.
In a dating situation where it’s highly likely that there will never be a “next occasion”, even if the first date isn’t a straight-up “dating for dinner” scam, it’s unfair for the people who do most of the initiating to shoulder most of the expense. (I also think that the date-initiating process ought to be less one-sided and gender-biased too, but let’s fight one battle at a time.)
That is how I understand it: you (having invited a guest or guests) pay for it this time, they invite you out and get the check next time. Emily Post is saying to take care of it in advance because it’s awkward to deal with such things in front of your guests, but if you frequently go out with the same person and you remember whose turn it is then maybe it doesn’t matter that much, especially when we are talking about casual decisions like, “Want to go have dinner at X… Sure, why not?” and not banquets with engraved invitations.
I’ll leave that to the next generation. I date for companionship, to get laid* and to maybe even find a soulmate. My method works very well.
*sex, of course, is not expected in exchange for the meal. If I am interested in another date and they aren’t, we part friends and I am not at all upset about it.
This seems like a very low-stress way to date. Pick a place you can comfortably afford, enjoy the evening expecting to pay the bill, and then pay all or half, however the situation presents itself at the end of the evening.
Low stress for your date, too.
I would ask to pay half, as I don’t want to feel beholden to you. And I’d be delighted that you didn’t make a fuss about that. With friends I expect to see many more times, one of us often picks up the tab. But on a first date I’d rather not.
When I was dating between marriages, it just seemed to work out better to meet for coffee or something low key for a first date so that either of us could bail if the chemistry wasn’t there.
I don’t know. When I was in college and maybe high school, dates were like what you described. Getting to know someone and seeing if there would be more dates. Or the other extreme and it would just be taking someone back to my dorm/fraternity room to hook up.
Even though I spent most of my adult life living in/around Boston or New York City, I was more of a “girlfriend guy”. And that was well before internet dating and apps. So never really had long stretches of extended “singleness”, going on lots of one-off dates or one night stands for months or years at a time.
But it kind of makes sense with technology that people would accelerate the process a bit. Like you can both tell from the app that you like the other’s appearance. So you spend some cursory time going out to dinner to see if you are compatible, actually look like your profile, and maybe distinguish the transaction from actual prostitution. Then if all goes well, you go hook up. if not, at least you got a free meal,
I know this isn’t the dating advice thread, but (unless you like internet dating and apps), if you avoid “blind dates” and go out with people you at least met and chatted with once or twice, at least some of the really disastrous dates can be completely avoided because you don’t have to go anywhere with them in the first place.
Also, dinner should never ever ever be “transactional”— remember (I suppose I agree with @Limmin ), it’s not necessarily about romance— you can hang out with a friend or colleague, and whether the meal is on you or you split it or any other arrangement, the point is that you should enjoy the company, or else why bother? (And as for having sex with people, IMO it’s better if it is with someone you can stand being in a room with for 5 minutes.)