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Mon, 06/25/2007

Why Should I Be The One to Pay for Dates? by Paul Dobransky:

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This question is perhaps one of the most sensitive ones asked by men (to each other) in modern dating. They almost never raise the subject to women in so many words, and there is a reason. It completely goes against feminine gender instinct to do so. You shouldn't even think of asking.

I have a male friend who has a saying something like this: "Her money is her money, and my money is her money." He says this looking to the heavens as if in agony. Perhaps it is an occurrence that is unique to some areas of the western world, maybe in urban centers? - but not likely asked as much in rural areas of the US, nor much at all in large areas of Asia.

In the West, we are caught in the competing twin forces of cultural change and biological instinct among the genders. Today women excel at careers formerly dominated by men, as growing numbers of men wish that "a fish needs a bicycle."

There have, after all, been millenia of patriarchal directives about how economies will operate, who will work at what vocation, and who will most profit from that work. Throughout that history, one might be hard-pressed though to find a specific man with a specific evil plan to engineer the undermining the rights and prosperity of half the world's population. It happened as a biological, instinctive effect, and as a process of group psychology rather than any one individual's master plan.

It was nevertheless, not fair, and perhaps we can thank technology for taking us out of the industrial age into the information age - where the relative size of our bodies, brute strength and muscularity do not matter nearly as much for socioeconomic advancement as they did even several decades ago.

The playing field is leveled in career, by technology.

Okay, fine. Then why do I get all these questions form men about "If we are truly equal, then why do I have to pay for every date, or I'm considered a jerk?"

Because even if our cultures change, become more sophisticated and advanced, our biology of the gender instincts do not change at more than a glatial pace. It will be many hundreds of thousands of years before questions such as this one don't tweak the sensitivity of both men and women anymore.

In The Secret Psychology of How We Fall in Love, I lay out for you the psychological steps of human courtship in practical lessons and exercises. The earliest three are about the process of Sexual Attraction between the genders.

Among those unconscious, instinctual moves that women make on the "animal behavior" level, is to express an "approval of a man" or recognition that he is of "high status" among other men in her eyes.

Part of the man's task is to BE of that status. Since status itself carries with it material means in its most easily-identified form, the man paying for dates is not some cultural law written down on paper. It is written in our wordless Reptilian Brained gender instincts.

Women are hard-wired to TEST men for their status at this "animal attraction" level, and men are hard-wired to rise to the occasion of what seems like "gentlemanliness" - to show the ability to protect, secure, provide for, and care for the woman in question. It is unconsciously suggested by his actions that he can also care for her offspring materially too. He can feed them.

What is so hard for both men and women in such a civilized culture such as our own, is that it is our Higher Brain - the center of civility, diplomacy and cultural identity - that we intellectually ponder the relative fairness of rights, roles, and monetary fairness of contribution to a relationship.

Men today see women as at least as capable at career as they are, and yet there is an unspoken expectation in a vast number of dating couples that the male demonstrate his "means." The problem in our misunderstanding is that it is gender instinct of the Reptilian Brain, not the logic of the Higher Brain that is running the show here.

Even in the wild, examples of the Bower Bird shows a male who goes to extraordinary lengths to decorate his nest, building it of exotic (to us), colored material and things found in the wilderness, adorning the nest and triggering attraction to mate in the female bird.

It is in the biology of men and women for there to be an instinct for the man to demonstrate his means.

When this urge, this reflex, this instinct kicks in, it is no wonder that many a woman feels somehow uncomfortable when at first a man doesn't go "dutch," and insists on paying for the date. Her Higher Brained, intellectual sensibility tells her that this is somehow not right culturally (she makes as much, or more money than him), yet something in her says it IS right, too. (And if he demands that they go dutch, it is off-putting.) Truly, to the feminine Reptilian-Brained biology it IS off-putting.

The man goes off feeling resentful after being lectured by his own Higher Brain that today, women he personally knows may do as well or better financially than men, yet "why am I paying?" Underneath, he feels an urge, an instinct, to want to finance the date ANYWAY, and in spite of what he believes INTELLECTUALLY.

The gender instincts of Sexual Attraction are NOT logical. They do not operate by reason. That is for the Higher Brain.

The solution is for men to know their own gender instincts and that of women, while balancing this knowledge against their specific Higher Brained cultural beliefs about what is proper social politics.

If men really let themselves FEEL what it is like to treat on dates, they will not b able to deny feeling more masculine (and therefore attracted and attractive) to the women. The woman who lets a man pay, may intellectually feel against anything but "going Dutch" - yet when she DOES, she somehow, inexplicably may feel as if the man is bad-mannered, or somehow unmasculine.

Simply knowing we are both wired differently at the "animal level" of the Reptilian Brain, may make this dilemma easier for both women and men to navigate.

It's alright for the man to pay, with good judgment and wisdom, not every cent he owns, but with gender diplomacy.

It's okay to pay. As long as neither the man, nor women, feel that they are being manipulated.

We cover tough questions like this on the weekly newsletter at www.womenshappiness.com for women and www.doctorpaul.net for men. Free lessons on the psychological steps of courtship are at www.drpauldobransky.com, the steps we can't change, nor would we want to if we want to feel fuly alive within our gender.

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