Food, Home and Style

Love in the Time of Layoff: Cheap Date

Twice, my friend Susan (I have changed some names and identifiers) found herself covering for a date who was short on cash. On the first date. At the end of one of them, there was even a humiliating walk to an ATM machine, where he handed her precisely his half and thanked her for a nice evening. Susan was mortified.

I would be too, and obviously so should those guys. Being cheap (or disorganized) is not unusual in the annals of dating, but it seems like some people are using the recession as cover for skimping out.

“Those people aren’t going to get laid,” says Hattie Elliott, founder of Save the Date(ing), which hosts events for mingling and matching. The recession, she says, “doesn’t take away our expectations. Women still want to be wooed and have the door opened and taken to dinner.”

Might sound sort of old-fashioned, and it is – really old-fashioned. This expectation is just basic evolutionary instincts still playing out. “The underlying need for a female human is…a protector and provider,” writes Dan Bacon, CEO of TheModernMan.com.

In hard times, especially, being less than this really stands out.

Sally agreed to go out with a marketing manager she met at a social event after he pestered her to meet for dinner. The restaurant was nice, Da Umberto, but when they headed out to their next stop, an art gallery two neighborhoods away, he suggested they take the subway, instead of a cab. She felt that, despite these tough times, a cab would have been more appropriate.

Hattie says that basically, this date was probably not doing anything new. “There’s a bifurcation – those who always were cheapskates and others who see it as an ethical thing to provide for things on a date.”

Oh good, at least something hasn’t changed.

Tags: dating, Love in the Time of Layoff, relationships, romance