I agree with the take this relationship out back and put it out of its misery! I get that you don’t have much dating experience (if you’re 28 and were in a 10 yr relationship then that started in high school) but this is NOT how dating works. Like at all. I can’t believe you put up with him NEVER PICKING UP A CHECK for that long!! It’s not like this is a you always pay your way and he always pays yours – he has literally NEVER MADE AN EFFORT to treat you. Of course he’s well aware of what he’s doing – he’s taking complete and total advantage of you. This “fancy dinner” is just a carrot he’s going to dangle for you for months – it’s NOT going to happen. I woul literally put money on him NEVER following thru with that. If he wanted to take you somewhere nice he’d have done it already. OR taken you LITERALLY ANYWHERE and paid for you after you brought up the issue. It could be Applebee’s for all I care, it’s the thought that counts not the dollar amount. I’ll go out on a limb and say he doesn’t “do holidays” so he didn’t get you any gifts. He’s a mooch, drop him.

Look its ok in the beginning before you are a couple to go 50/50. It is also ok after that to pick up 100% of a bill. The thing is that after you have decided you are in a relationship together then you pick up a rhythm to paying and you take a night to discuss it. I make less than my now husband, I always have more significantly early on. He still let me pick up 100% of the bill at times usually at lower end restaurants where the bill is less than $50 and usually on week nights. More expensive dinners or dinners with other people we never split and he always pays. We had the conversation on our first overnight trip together on what worked for us and what we were comfortable with. This is one of the conversations that really made me see my husband as a future husband when without talking about our future he was thinking about not only our future but what would be best for me financially not just him. People show you who they are, this guy is proving to you who he is and what he is worried about for your future by what he lets you purchase for him (I mean picking up the bill for dinner and dates). These ques he is giving you are more significant than anything he ever says.

“Once more unto the breach….” Here I come to defend the awful guy again.

To start with the thing that surprised me most: where on earth do you guys get the idea that the obvious reason that someone would say, “I don’t remember saying that” is to gaslight someone, i.e. try to make them think they are crazy. It seems to me far more likely that here it is a way of avoiding taking responsibility for the things he said, that now, with hindsight seem like not a good idea. Either it was a promise that he made that he failed to keep, or now doesn’t want to keep, or something hurtful that he said. If he doesn’t admit saying it he can’t be blamed for it or held to it. Not saying that that is right, but it seems more likely that the purpose is defence rather than attack.

I may be oversensitive to this because it is a phrase that I use a fair bit, although, I hasten to add, very rarely for the purpose stated above. When I use it, what I often mean is, “I know damn well that I didn’t say what you are accusing me of saying, but it seems like a bad idea to basically accuse you of lying, which might escalate things, so I will say this, which seems a little more tactful.” Actually, in that situation, wouldn’t flatly saying, “No, I didn’t say that.” be more like gaslighting?

Also, another time that I use that phrase is when I genuinely do not remember whether or not I said the thing I am accused of saying. Sadly, whether it’s early onset dementia or just having more and more on my mind, this happens more and more often these days. When you are in that situation, what are you supposed to do? Just admit to anything that someone accuses you of saying, otherwise you are gaslighting them? It literally never dawned on me before that by honestly confessing my lack of memory, I was gaslighting the person that I was talking to.

I really think that this is another example of different people having different approaches. There is nothing wrong with wanting to split the expenses when you are out with someone. Indeed the other approach, I’ll pay everything this time, you pay next time, is basically the same idea (things are roughly split equally) differently executed. Some of us are “let’s each pay our own bills” (or 50/50) people and some are “Let’s take turns.” Neither way is wrong. Indeed the “pay our own bills” is probably the better way to ensure that things are fair. The problem with it, for the let’s take turns people, is that it seems a bit cold-blooded and means that at every date there has to be an accounting.

I find it ironic that some of you take his labelling her suggestion of alternating paying as weird as evidence of him having a nefarious purpose, when basically many of you were busy labelling his continual splitting the bill as weird earlier in the thread. When there are two approaches why is it necessary to conclude that one is weird and the other is normal. It seems to me quite likely that the worst this guy is is clueless. In fact, I wonder if he’s somewhere on the autism spectrum (I know there’s no evidence for this, but neither is there any evidence against it – I’m just saying it’s possible.) I can easily imagine someone with Asberger’s believing that splitting the bill is the only fair way to do it, labelling another suggestion as weird, and yet gratefully accepting when she offers to pay (“She knows I’m short on cash, and she wouldn’t offer if she didn’t want to do it.”)

If you believe that the man should pay for the majority of the dates (if not all of them) because, if he doesn’t he is proving he doesn’t value her, then all I can say is, “Wow.” I guess you can believe this if you want, but there is really no way in which this view can be said to be anything other than irrational and out-dated, if not positively sexist. The only way in which this can be justified is as a quaint gesture, like opening car doors or other doors for a lady, that is nice when it is offered, but shouldn’t have too much weight put on it. Saying that if the man doesn’t pay for things, he doesn’t value a woman, is basically saying that the only way that a man can show that he values a woman is if he lays down cold, hard cash for her. If he doesn’t do this, no matter what else he does, he doesn’t really value her. That seems to me to be an extremely mercenary, if not whorish, way of looking at relations between the sexes.