Go Dutch if you want to go again

In more from the world of first-date advice, I've got another fast fix-it for all of our wonderful readers:

Pay for your own experience.

I believe you'll come to see that part of our central philosophy at DATE is dating egalitarianism. We're living in a world where feminist criticism has given us an opportunity to shine new light on all of life's experiences, but somehow not enough of this light shines into the dating corner. Many people expect to go on the dates their grandmothers went on and then move on to fully equal, modern relationships.

To put a fine point on it, this doesn't work.

The dates we're all trained to go on - and, sadly, we're all trained to go on heteronormative heterosexual dates, so that's what I'm going to start by talking about - invest both too much power and too much responsibility in a man, while depriving a woman of a voice and any responsibility. In reality, whether you want to see it or not, the power dynamic is tipped most of the time before the two of you have even sat down to (anything but) dinner.

[Again, talking to just our heterosexual daters for a moment:]

A few questions for the lady dater: Did he make the initial contact (e.g., approach you in the bar, send the first message on the dating site, ask you when you got done slinging coffee)? Did he make the first call? Did he propose the plan and the time for your first date? Did you automatically accept his plan? Even if it barely interested you? Did you agree to be picked up? Did he do most of the talking and then pay the check?

This is the date everyone in American culture is taught to go on. This makes it no one's fault when two particular people have this experience. He's not an asshole if he picks the restaurant and suggests that you order the crab cakes. This is also what he's been taught: men have to do the approaching and chasing, have to make the phone calls, have to be the ones with the plans and the ones to make the reservations, pick up their female dates, charm them with talk of their high-paying jobs and thrilling hobbies and then, obviously, to pick up the check.

This dating model hasn't just ruined expectations and countless dates for heterosexual pairs. It's infected gay and lesbian dating from the time that gay men and lesbians started dating partners of their choosing out in the open. We automatically painted ourselves into male and female/masculine and feminine quarters: we became tops and bottoms, butches and femmes, and hardly gave a thought to what it would be like to create a dating world that wasn't based on a heterosexual model that was even oppressive to heterosexuals.

And I am by no means talking about some distant past: I once found myself, before I had started to take my own advice, saying to a man on the phone as we tried to make plans for our first date: "I thought men liked making all the decisions." In retrospect, it was one of the most debilitating and awful things I've ever said about myself, but it revealed a new world of dating truth to me. I'm a man: I date men: and neither of us should ever feel entirely responsible for what happens on a date.

With my apologies to almost everyone in the dating world: we haven't allowed our expectations of dating to change in about fifty years, and it's time for a quiet revolution.

It starts with paying for your own experience - and, let's be honest, you're probably still going to sit through a few more first dates in restaurants, and that means having the courage to reach for the check. Asserting yourself economically is one of the many things you can do straight off the bat to equal out power dynamics. Ideally, a date should be a meeting between two equals, and this can't be achieved when all of the power and responsibility are one side. Take an automatic load off your date and pay for your own tofu teriyaki. The added side benefit? If you're not used to doing it, you'll feel really good about yourself after. It's proof to both of you that you don't need your date in order to eat.

And that's powerful.