When A Woman Should and Shouldn’t Pay on a First Date

The age-old question settled with the psychology of investment and a few FBI moves.

I was running out of time.

I squinted my eyes and scanned the restaurant for Brad. He had to be somewhere in this sea of well-dressed diners. Or maybe he was in the bathroom? I chewed on the ice in my empty margarita glass and tapped my foot. I had to find him before it was too late. God, I hate first dates.

Brad was, of course, not my date. He was my waiter. And I was frantically searching for him for one reason— I had to intercept the check.

If you go on enough first dates, you probably have become conditioned to “the talk.” It’s the “you are nice but not my kind of nice, so we are never going on a second date” talk. Unless you have the compassion of fresh roadkill, this conversation will always cause some guilt.

Over time, I developed a simple philosophy for every first date. If I like him, I am not touching that check. Feminist? Pleeeease. Not when my lady bits are throbbing.

If I don’t like him, I wait for the FBI brush pass and intercept the check.

To be clear, I view picking up the check as an act of altruism. You are putting money back into your date’s pocket so he can take out another woman who will appreciate his longwinded diatribe about why everyone should drive a Tesla. (I so wish that was not a personal reference.) Meanwhile, you will not feel the least bit guilty when you give him some hackneyed blow-off as to why there is no chemistry.

Then there is the other scenario.

That guy smells like tree bark and vanilla and turbocharges the atmosphere with one witty bon mot after another. I plan to see you again, Mr. Wonderful. And if we are to begin this intricate dance of seduction, I need you to whip out your credit card, flash your alchemic smile, and say, “I got this.” (In this dream sequence, my date is Juan Pablo Di Pace. Just play along.)

If you share my “who pays on a first date” philosophy cultivated by years of Catholic guilt, then here are some tips on when you should and should not intercept the check.

When there will be no second date — the dead drop

First off, intercepting the check is not as easy as it sounds. In most cases, it requires ninja reflexes and the cunning of a double agent to out-maneuver your date. Most men are conditioned to get the check on a first date, and most waiters still place the check closer to the man.

So before the check hits the table, you have less than a millisecond to make eye contact with your server and secretly communicate— “if you put that bill near him, I will use my fork to gouge out my ovaries in the name of feminism.”

Some waiters will come up behind you and stealthily place the check down near your date before you even have time to react. This move is what FBI agents call a dead drop. A dead drop is a handoff in which a source leaves a physical object — papers, data, cash —in an agreed-upon location. The dead drop got its name because FBI agents used to hide objects in dead animals. So think of the check as a dead rat hiding your escape plans.

In these cases, you must distract your date by flirtatiously leaning in, quickly reaching across the table, and then spilling his ice water on his lap. You can also wait for your date to go to the bathroom and then use that moment to S.O.S your server.

Just remember the FBI motto — “Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity.” Godspeed.

When you do want a second date — drop it like it’s hot

In his best-selling book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, renowned psychologist and economist Daniel Kahneman explored the sunk cost fallacy — our tendency to continue to invest in something because we want to protect our initial investment.

Whether a new job, home, or partner, we want our efforts to result in a reward, so we are less likely to bail if we have already invested time, money, or effort. According to Kahneman, humans care more about avoiding losses than the promise of gains.

In other words, once someone invests in you, their brain is tricked into wanting to continue to “feed” that investment.

The sunk-cost fallacy is why we might sit through a terrible movie if we paid for the ticket and fought traffic to get there. Psychologists have even argued that it may explain why people stay in bad relationships past their due date. (Guilty!) We are driven to safeguard our investment by investing more.

A few caveats; Don’t order the foie gras and Kobe beef and then stick him with the check. Nor should you expect a man to continue to pick up the check once the courtship phase has passed. Don’t be a check princess.

But definitely allow someone to invest in you before you go full throttle into a love affair.

So, for all the men who get stuck with the check…Yeah, I am sorry. But it’s kind of your fault.

Maybe you shouldn’t tell that story about the time you rescued a kitten from a gutter and nursed it back to health. Try not smelling like unravaged man meat or fluttering your eyelashes like a baby giraffe. Stop making me laugh so hard my side hurts, and I am too injured to reach across the table and grab that check. Just stop being so fabulous.

Because it is going to cost you.

About the author:

Carlyn Beccia is an author, illustrator, columnist, and speaker. Beccia's books, including The Raucous Royals, I Feel Better with a Frog in My Throat, They Lost Their Heads, and Monstrous have won numerous awards, including the Golden Kite Honor, The International Reading Association's Young Adult Book Award, and the Cybil Award. For more information: www.CarlynBeccia.com

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