Finally, a post you can share with your girlfriend without her slamming you over the head with a rolling pin and moving into her mom’s. (No guarantees.)
This is the toned down version of a reply I made elsewhere (also available in the Notes section) on the subject of the “I pay $195259/yr for makeup so men should pay for the date” thing getting thrown around a lot on social media.
Even this toned down for the masses version only lasted five seconds as a comment on /r/dating before being deleted because, surprise, it’s illegal to post anything true on Reddit. So I made a second comment saying Trump was a madman and received 16,000 upvotes and was instantly made a mod. Weird.
“My face serum costs $250, so the guy should pay for the date”
Better hope she doesn't rock fake breasts too, that'll cost extra. She'll have the French champagne and take a box of lobster rolls home for her girlfriends, and her husband. Clearly the only solution is for the guy to have more expensive makeup and implants than her. Then does she have to pay?
The sentiment here (that's been shamelessly parroted off TikTok and social media) is tripe of such typicality and obvious wrongness that it can be dismissed outright, except that it's adjacent to the truth they're actually touching at: "my sex bestows on me such market value that you should obviously pay for even the vague possibility of accessing it."
Of course, they rarely know that consciously (unless they're on OF, go get it girl!) and wouldn't say it explicitly anyway, so that crap is the next closest thing. They’re always saying something other than what they’re saying, but sometimes the truth isn’t far off. It’s about interpreting what’s being obscured.
It's the same as the Man vs. Bear debate: If you really talk to women about it, they'll show in hardly uncertain terms what they're actually saying: "encountering creepy unattractive men is more off-putting than a 600 lbs wild animal that will slough my face off and eat my intestines while I’m still alive." If you asked whether they'd rather encounter Chris Brown, Ted Bundy, Drake, Charles Manson, or their choice of Hollywood abuser, you’d see it's not about danger, it's about unattractiveness, which to many women is literally and viscerally worse than possibly dying. Abusers and criminals do very well for reasons no one likes to discuss and every girl thinks they're immune from. Then why are you dating that jerk instead of the spindly nerd that brings you flowers? Please return my texts, Jessica.
Some just shrug and reply it's not worth splitting hairs on what guys or girls do. That's true, but examining what's happening beneath the surface, boiling it down to the elemental, primal level is valuable. That’s what I do here. Let me know in the comments how awesome I am at it.
That's what makes Patrice O'Neal's philosophy on women and happiness so poignant and useful that I write a whole stupid blog about it, and find his stuff from the Black Philip Show more useful than the sum of all the other stuff on dating and relationships I have ever read, which is a lot. And yet my wife still thinks I’m an asshole.
Try reversing the value in the scenario, something Patrice and hoe_math do a lot: A man has to struggle and strive to be interesting, smart, well-groomed, well-dressed, funny, knowledgeable, experienced, confident, have hobbies and interests, have money, have success, have social proof, provide the logistics of the date, keep the conversation going. And she thinks the possibility of accessing her— and let's be honest, we mean accessing her sex— is equal to that.
The man finds it confusing, then, that his paying for dinner is guaranteed, but the sex isn’t, and the bank finds it confusing that he is reporting the third fraud claim on his credit card that month.
That's the frustration of men, because her sex, at least the vaguely implied promise of it, is almost equally valuable functionally, which is why a model who banks mostly on their good looks can walk into a room of top celebrities who've worked their way up the ladder through blood, sweats, and tears as if they're on the same footing. That's not to say models don't have to work hard, we totally do, but you get my point.
And the thinking man will naturally resent that this girl has the gall to try and muddy the waters by pretending it's the makeup, or her in-demandness, or her special-not-like-other-girls qualities (education, job, spirituality, loyalty, values she pretends to share, whatever) that make her better than you and deserving of your time and money.
Try telling her all that next time she orders the lobster, and report in ;)
The key is to remember that you're better than her and truly know it. Not like a seething incel, but like a man who's confident his value is better than a well-decorated person you want to have sex with.
If you don't really, truly think you’re a superior man, better get on that.
And subscribe.
The title was a trick. Should you pay for the date, her makeup, her kid’s cereal? Should she pay for your useless college degree, your time at clown school where you learned to be funny, the years of struggling through women to learn to be funny and interesting?
It doesn’t matter what me or anyone says. Whatever you do, do it with your reason and your purpose in mind.