Dating : Are Men Still Buying Drinks for Women?

When I first started dating my husband I was very young and still had some mixed-up ideas about what “the boy” in the relationship was supposed to do. And yes, that included paying for our dates.

My future husband thought that was dumb, as we were both equally poor college students, and made it clear that we would each be paying for ourselves. We could split the bill or take turns paying, but he could see no reason why I would expect him to pay for our drinks or food.

It annoyed me for a while and made me wonder if he was cheap (not one of my favorite traits in a person), but after a while, it became one of my favorite things about him.

I think he saw me as an individual who was perfectly capable of paying for myself. In time I came to see what a gift he had given me: There were no transactions in our relationship. We each paid for ourselves and it became clear as we got to know one another that neither of us had expensive tastes and we both knew how to splurge on a few experiences we really wanted while overall remaining very fiscally responsible.

It was great not to feel I owed him anything. It was great to learn about how he was with money by watching him spend his own. He wasn’t cheap; he was respectful of money and the power it has and how people feel about it. He was a person who wasn’t absolutely tied to the way things are usually done. I looked at all of those things, and I knew he was the right one, even though he often annoyed the crap out of me on a range of issues and still does.

One of the things that annoy me is how often he’s right. He was certainly right about splitting the date tabs.

What does the Internet have to say about this?

Because I am clueless, today I threw this phrase at Google: “Are men still buying women drinks.”

Here are some of the top links:

To get them drunk and less inhibited, is what that article goes on to say.

A range of answers there, but yes, some men are just trying to show they’re interested, some feel owed a conversation for the duration of the drink, and yes, some expect sex.

Not as bad as you’d think, from that title, but still, ew. This never occurred to me either, as my parents weren’t really the “hang out with their kids’ generation” type.

A woman was shocked when a guy bought her a drink and then expected one in return. I guess maybe that would surprise me, but see an earlier statement about never having been bought a drink.