#08 Who PAYS For The Date? Navigating Payment In Dating

Summary
In this episode of The Tinder Project, hosts Mark Rosenfeld and Teal Riege discuss various aspects of online dating, including personal updates, the quality of experiences, the concept of feedback texts, and the nuances of payment on dates. Teal shares her exciting news about her pregnancy, while both hosts reflect on the importance of setting up dating profiles effectively and the significance of feedback in improving dating experiences. They also delve into the complexities of who should pay on dates, emphasizing the need for open communication and understanding in modern relationships.

Takeaways
Teal is pregnant, marking an exciting personal update.
Quality online dating experiences can be achieved with the right profile setup.
Feedback texts can provide valuable insights into dating experiences.
Confidence is key when seeking feedback from past dates.
Navigating payment on dates requires open communication and understanding.
Expectations and standards in dating can influence relationship dynamics.
It's important to avoid taking care of men financially to maintain respect.
Energy levels during dates can significantly impact attraction.
Offering to pay can create a positive dynamic in dating.
Understanding personal values around money is crucial in relationships.

Chapters
0:00 Introduction
1:05 Teal's Special News
2:37 Dating App LOLs From This Week
7:45 What Is A 'Feedback Text' And When Can You Use It?
15:46 Who Should Pay For The Date?
24:22 What To Do When A Date Location Is Well Beyond Your Budget
26:45 If You Make The Same Money As Him, If/When Should You Start Offering To Pay?

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 1:05 Teal's Special News
• 2:37 Dating App LOLs From This Week
• 7:45 What Is A 'Feedback Text' And When Can You Use It?
• 15:46 Who Should Pay For The Date?
• 24:22 What To Do When A Date Location Is Well Beyond Your Budget
• 26:45 If You Make The Same Money As Him, If/When Should You Start Offering To Pay?

Transcript

[Speaker 1]
G'day and welcome to The Tinder Project, the podcast where a straight Aussie man attempts to survive 365 days dating online as an American woman. I'm your host, Mark Rosenfeld, Australia's dating coach for women. I'm here with my sidekick, self-love coach, Teal Elizabeth, and together we have one mission to make meeting good men fun and easy for you.

Let's give it a go. An exciting update on The Tinder Project. What is a feedback text and when would you use one in dating and how to navigate payment on a first date and moving through the dating process?

Welcome back to The Tinder Project. It is fantastic to have you here. I'm here with self-love empowerment coach, Feminine Energy.

I was about to say wizard, but that would be completely inappropriate, wouldn't it? Feminine Energy, enchantress, what's the word there?

[Speaker 2]
I like that. Yeah. We could go with priestess, goddess, priest.

Any of those ones work for me. I'll answer to any.

[Speaker 1]
Wow. That escalated. Welcome Teal.

It's great to have you back on The Tinder Project.

[Speaker 2]
Always so fun to be here, Mark. I want to know what is going on with you this week. How has it been dating as a woman?

[Speaker 1]
I have some good stuff to share, but Teal, I think before we even go there, I believe you have something even more exciting to share.

[Speaker 2]
Do you not? I was hesitant to tell even you, but I guess I can tell our listeners too. I'm pregnant.

[Speaker 1]
Yay. Amazing news. Amazing.

For those who don't know, that is Teal's second, second one along the way. So congratulations, Teal. Are you the type Teal that finds out the gender before the birth or are you going to wait and, or are you going to find out, sorry, are you going to wait until he or she comes home?

[Speaker 2]
Oh, I can't wait. I am so impatient, like wanting to know so bad. But my husband probably wants to wait at least till like the 20 week anatomy scan.

So I've got at least a good three months more to wait. Okay.

[Speaker 1]
So you just, you kind of chill out till that middle scan. And do you set up the room in certain colors before he or she comes home or is that a bit too far?

[Speaker 2]
No, no, I haven't gotten that far even thinking about that yet, but we'll probably do something gender neutral for sure. But yeah, I have a little 18 month baby boy right now. So kind of hoping for a little girl.

We'll see what happens.

[Speaker 1]
So you're roughly 18 months ahead of me in the parenting process. Does the second child kind of get the nursery stuff of the first child? And that's kind of how it rolls.

Is that?

[Speaker 2]
I'm already feeling like I have a lot less enthusiasm for all the first things of baby. I'm just like, ah, you can have all the leftovers.

[Speaker 1]
I was going to say, the photo album's never quite the same, is it? It's just, it's hard to replicate that same dedication on the photo album.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Anyway, Tinder project. So we've got some big stuff. I've got some cool stats coming for you next week.

I geek out on the stats, as you know, but this week I thought I would just share a couple of things that made me giggle this week. I will say, I have to say this week actually, there has been some guys that have come through the profile that have been consistently fantastic. So showing up, giving me a call, making great conversation.

It's really been just very impressive to me how much the guys have been showing up and how many great, I have clients that are going, Hey, can I, can we finagle it so I can meet them?

[Speaker 2]
Seriously, that's like a little pimping you out service.

[Speaker 1]
If we could just transition this over to me, I know I'm 15 years age difference and look nothing like the, like Sam, but can we, can we do that? So that's been kind of funny, but I have been really impressed with the quality of guys. And it just, it's gone to show me again and again, that if you know how to set up your profile, you know how to do your messaging.

And if you keep an open mind to men and the great people online, yes, there are some duties. We're going to look at a couple of today because they made me giggle, but there are some absolutely wonderful people online that I found. So more on that next week.

This week, I wanted to share just, just a couple of little, little ones to you that made me giggle throughout this week. I think we can all use a little giggle today. So all right, let's see what we got here.

First is a fellow names. In fact, I'm going to share the screen here. So for all the listeners, I'm going to describe what I'm seeing here.

We had a couple of interesting photos this week. So first up was Dio. Not only did Dio not show his eyes in the photo, he has a cowboy hat on and he's looking very Yellowstone down at the ground, very serious.

He had a picture of driving across a bridge on his profile.

[Speaker 2]
I don't know which bridge. Nothing says a swoon worthy picture, like sideways. Like traffic.

Traffic.

[Speaker 1]
It's so random. It's great. I just love it.

I just, I've been trying to figure out which bridge this is now, obviously for those listening, you can't see, but anyone on video, I think we're looking somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. If anyone can identify this bridge, maybe I'll give them a shout out on the next episode. How about that?

Bridge shout out coming. Next up, we had this gentleman here. This was Tony.

Tony was kind of flashing himself, but not in the horrible way he would expect online. Tia, do you want to describe to the audio listeners what we're seeing here on Tony's profile?

[Speaker 2]
Oh my God. It's just barf worthy. It's a dollar, dollar bills, y'all.

[Speaker 1]
Not just dollar bills.

[Speaker 2]
We got hundos and fifties. How many we got there? At least a thousand, maybe 2000.

[Speaker 1]
We got about $2,500 just fanned out on Tony's profile. And he's looking real proud of himself. He's got a big grin on his face in his next photo, actually.

[Speaker 2]
So again, nothing says swoon worthy, like just flashing your cash in my face.

[Speaker 1]
I was going to say, it's actually quite appropriate to today's episode. Tony is not going to make you question who's paying for the date ever. I'll tell you what, you want to head out with Tony, you know what to expect.

And then I had a couple of others that amused me. This was Jeff. Jeff had obviously caught on that men were lying about their age online.

And so he went and found a wall, which happened to stand next to it, which happened, and stood next to it. And the wall just happened to have six foot, six FT marker on it. But wait, get this.

The best bit is further down in his profile where it says, hi, Jeff did in fact put 5'10". He lied negatively about his profile, either that or he's just an inch short of the wall here. But I found it highly amusing that Jeff stood next to a six foot wall and then told us very candidly, he was 5'10".

[Speaker 2]
Oh, he gets brownie points in my book.

[Speaker 1]
You know what Jeff, I appreciate you. Of all the guys on today's episode, you get the most appreciation. And finally we had someone very special.

This profile caught my attention because it really teaches us a key concept of online, especially if you are using a website that allows you to write a decent size profile slash bio. And the concept is something I like to refer to as paragraphs. And if you fail to take advantage of this concept, you could end up like Phillip.

Phillip just forgot. He was having a busy day. He didn't get around the paragraphs that day.

And I counted this this morning. For those that are listening, basically we have Phillip's profile here and Phillip has a normal size sentence across the page, about 12, 14 words, but he has 57 lines down the page without a paragraph. I haven't read any of this, but I'm sure it's noteworthy in some way as to what he wrote.

Nobody's reading this, Phillip, but shout out to you because you have officially the longest profile and the most unreadable, and in some ways the most impressive that I've come across in a very odd way on match.com.

[Speaker 2]
So Teal, those- These are gems. I'm impressed that you've been able to pull all these together just for us to have a little giggle. Thank you for that.

[Speaker 1]
We've got some characters, right? Moving on from these fascinating souls, feedback texts. So this was something you kind of asked me about and it's something I use with clients a little bit.

It's a little bit of a niche thing, to be honest, Teal. It's not something I reach for all the time. Maybe listeners, maybe you guys can relate.

Sometimes you're getting out there on dates and especially for me as a coach, you know, I really like to get my clients out on dates. I like them getting out there, meeting men, connecting, giving guys a chance, opening their hearts, practicing their feminine energy, setting boundaries, doing all that stuff in the presence of real men. Sometimes in some clients' cases, they might get first or second dates reasonably often, maybe a phone call reasonably often, but the guys aren't moving it forward after that.

It's like the momentum goes out of it. They say, Mark, I've had like five or six first dates, but no seconds, or five or six phone calls, but no dates. And I say, well, are you not wanting the dates?

And they say, actually, no, not really. I actually would have been open to the dates. And in fact, I told the guy as such.

That's the first thing I always check on, you know, did you give a clear green light? And if a client says yes, we start to see this as a pattern, as in essentially the attraction's not there, it's not coming through in some way, shape, or form. A feedback text is something that I'll sometimes have clients send a couple of weeks after things have fizzled out.

Usually you want to wait that long just in case it pops its head back above ground. But it's basically, I'll read a script for it, but it's basically asking for feedback on, hey, do you have anything that you noticed that you could give me feedback on to be a more attractive date in the future? Now I will say this, a lot of them don't get responses.

Probably half the time they don't get a response. So you can't really expect one when you send it. The other half of the time you get a response that really isn't helpful.

You get something like, oh no, it's nothing. It's you, not me. Oh no, I'm just busy.

I haven't been in a position. Like the guy doesn't want to hurt your feelings. You're a stranger to him.

You're not going to get quality feedback. But every now and then you'll land a little bit of gold out of it. And especially if you have had a pattern of this happening and then you get similar feedback from different guys, that's when it can be appropriate or even helpful to kind of take some of that feedback in.

So I'll give you an example of a script here that I use. I've got one or two examples here. One might sound like this to you.

So it's hey name. So hey, John, I wanted to ask a question that would help me a lot about dot, dot, dot, our date. Smiley face.

I was afterwards hoping it might land or lead to rather a second. Obviously we weren't on the same page there, which is totally fine with a big grin emoji. Just curious if you could give me any honest all caps feedback on your perception of me or what was missing in single quotation marks for you so I can improve my dating skills in the future.

Thanks with a big smiley face. I have another script I can share. It goes along similar lines, but Teal, I found this really useful in just sometimes helping spot patterns and sometimes allowing a client to go, oh, okay, maybe that is something I could work on a little bit.

Have you ever used anything like this? What's your experience with it?

[Speaker 2]
You know, I haven't, and I love this approach. I think it takes a lot of confidence on the woman's side to actually go out to that person who quote unquote rejected her and be very open to that feedback. So I think, you know, just before putting our heart out there, like, what did I do wrong?

Really checking in and making sure that it's not coming from a place of insecurity, but it's really genuinely coming from a place of inner confidence of helping me understand how I can improve. Because I think that's sometimes where it could probably get misconstrued if it's coming through of like, you rejected me, like, what did I do wrong? How can I make this better?

We definitely don't want it to come through that way, right? That's not the intention of this. But really, if we can be in that place of empowerment of like, and that's, I think, part of the journey of this dating thing too, is not being so attached in the early days and being able to just really look at every single one of these experiences as feedback, as data, as another input for you to learn about yourself on this process.

Then I think using this is a fabulous tool to just be able to learn more about yourself in the presence of all these men.

[Speaker 1]
And it's surprising when you word it in a really positive self-improvement appreciative way, how many guys actually give a positively vibe response. The responses aren't always helpful, as I say, and sometimes you're just testing on the wrong guy. You know, if you ask someone who is very overweight and unhealthy for health advice, you're probably not going to want to take on that advice.

So if you happen to have run into a guy in the dating pool, who's extremely avoidant and terrified of obligation, you might be asking for feedback from someone you are unaware is really not the person you should ask feedback on. And that's why you do have to take this with a grain of salt. But particularly if you find a string of guys who you're using your tracker or however you keep them organized in your brain, and you're saying, these are really good guys, these are securely attached guys, these seem like solid, consistent, do what they say, say what they do guys.

And they don't seem to be asking me on follow-up dates. That's where you can get benefit from this and go, okay, you know what? I'll see what they come back with.

If it's all a mishmash or if it doesn't make sense, I'll just throw it out. But if I'm getting the same thing from multiple, what I would consider to be good, high quality dudes, that's where you start to go, cool, I can bring that into my dating and be a more attractive and better human as a result.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah. So I'm curious too, have you had any specific feedback come through from some of your clients? I'd be curious to hear what some of that feedback is, if you want to share.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, I've had a couple. I've had a couple say you were kind of low energy. I felt the conversation was a little bit dull.

So I don't know if he said it in that exact words, I'm paraphrasing a little bit, but it was basically like, ah, it probably wasn't flowing or the conversation wasn't as free flowing or as kind of energizing as I was hoping it would. Had a couple that said, look, you seem like you're in a kind of a good place where you're wanting to meet someone. And to be honest, I'm not really in that place.

So we had a couple of guys who almost like outed themselves in a way, but did it in a really positive way. We did get one client who had a bit of feedback on her presentation and even her odor at one stage. And she had to work on that, but didn't take it personally and said, oh, geez, okay, that's a bit of a wake up call.

And there was one other one that I wanted to bring to the table. What was it? One client got the feedback that she seemed a bit overenthusiastic and she got that from one guy and sort of got something a bit similar from another guy.

And I actually listened to one of her dates on the phone and I had a similar vibe coming across. So it's good to be chatting. And I encourage clients often to talk more, but in her case, it was a bit too forward and it was a bit too enthusiastic.

And she was leading the conversation because of nerves as it turned out. So we had to kind of get her to lean back and sit in a bit more silence and just kind of chill. So yeah, we've had some interesting feedback from it and it's definitely cool to hear it from different angles because I can sometimes listen to phone dates from clients, but I can't necessarily buy a van and follow them around.

People have issues with that.

[Speaker 2]
And I'd say besides the poor woman with the odor issue, I think what I'm hearing the theme is for most of these is the men were feeling something was off with their energy, whether it was being low energy or too high energy or being nervous energy or something. So I think this is a really just good takeaway for all of our listeners, just how important your energy is. And this is, like I said, the world I love to play in is what is the energy that you are intentionally or unintentionally bringing into each of these interactions?

Because we have that ability before we pick up that phone call to just, like you said, take a beat, take a big, deep breath, relax our energy, get back into that feminine space. Remember who we are. Remember how incredible we are.

Drop into that beautiful softness and then pick up the phone. Right. And what a difference that energy will bring versus that.

Oh, I just got off work and oh my God, the dog just puked on the carpet. And okay. Oh, hi.

How's it going? Right.

[Speaker 1]
I love that. Very well said. So Teal, shall we move to payment of dates?

Because this is a topic that I know we both have interesting takes on. Who should pay for the day? Should the man offer?

Should the woman pay? Would you like to go first on this one or shall we throw it out?

[Speaker 2]
Sure. Yeah. I think we just have a meaty discussion for both of us on this.

I hear this come up so often in my communities, even with my clients, because it's a really, it's a tricky situation in the modern day, right? We as women, we are badass ladies that can take care of ourselves. And we make just as much sometimes, if not more than them.

And so there is a real conundrum of, well, what do we do? Like, do we pay? Do we not pay?

Um, what does this mean? What does this not mean? And then there's this whole other idea of chivalry, which is like, we really want to be taken care of.

We want the man to lead. And in my eyes, I think it's really important to do the dance a little bit, do the dance of offering to pay, but allowing them to say, no, no, no, I've got this. If they feel like they want to, um, you know, a lot of women will just sit there and just assume right off the bat.

Of course you're paying. This is the first date men do that. That's what you do.

But I think sometimes that can come off a little bit snobby. Um, and obviously if that's a really important value to you and you do not want a man to pay, then that's something that you have to really sit with for yourself and ask yourself, this is a, this is a non-negotiable value of mine and I'm okay with that. And I'm going to lead with that.

But for the most part, I think that because these gender roles are kind of wishy-washy with who's going to be doing more of this, who's going to be doing more of that. I mean, so many, like my husband stays home and watches the kid while I work sometimes. Right?

So the gender roles are so different these days that we can't just go in assuming that men are just going to step into that role. But I think that we can do the dance in offering it, but being gracious if they want to, you know, take over, um, it gives that chance for the men to still feel like they can be that shovel risk partner. Um, and you can lean into the feminine space.

I think too, if a man, you know, does something that feels off to you and you don't like it, it's just a beautiful opportunity for both of you to have a really open discussion about it and not be afraid to talk about it on the first date. Hey, I know this is always weird, but what do you think about this? How do you feel about this?

Like, I'm happy to pay, but I'm curious what you think. Um, it doesn't have to be this unspoken thing that nobody talks about and then everyone feels annoyed and weird and confused. I think the last thing we want to do is come off being entitled, being snobby, being assuming, um, yeah.

I'm curious about your thoughts.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. I actually think that's gold guys. And I was kind of hoping Teal and I would disagree a bit more on this, but I'm on the same page mostly for the same reasons.

I will say a couple of things here. I think the first is, as Teal alluded to, this is, this is modern dating. And if you're going out with a friend, as in just your BFF, you would pay separately.

If you were going out with a purely polarized feminine masculine partner, then you would receive that and be a hundred percent in the receiving role. Modern relationships have this weird thing now where we're trying to find the same thing in both people. We're looking for feminine masculine.

Sometimes we're looking for a best friend other times. It's a lot to put on a person, but realistically you've got to think towards, well, what do I want in the long run? Do I want a perfect 50, 50 more friend leaning situation?

That situation is going to have less polarity, but it's going to be more like a, we're complete equals. We do everything equal. We're more or less friends.

Now, not many people want that, but there's a very small selection of people that feel safer in that. Um, or the opposite would be a much more traditional situation, which is where you don't work. You depend on him a hundred percent for finance.

Maybe you have a job now, but you have no intention of keeping that. If we take it to certain religions, that could even be multiple wives in certain situations. So the truly traditional approach I don't think is applicable to many of our listeners.

If you're a truly traditional woman, you're okay with that approach. You go, I'm going to be staying at home, doing a hundred percent family, doing a hundred percent homemaking, being a hundred percent provided for. If that's your goal, if that's truly your goal of relationships, it probably makes more sense to do that.

I'm not even going to offer approach, but I think there's two things really important here. Number one is we're building a hybrid approach. And most of you, our listeners, most of yours and my clients here is people are moving more towards a hybrid model, which is, I want the man to be the man some of the time, but I want to be an equal contributor and his friend other times.

And there's this sort of balance between the two. So I think the offer with the man ultimately declining the offer and paying for it, sets both of those frames at the same time. It sets, we can do the masculine feminine dance and it says we could be friends if we needed to.

So I think it basically does the best job of saying, I want the hybrid model. The other piece that Teal also alluded to is the difference between standards and expectations. And I think a lot of women get these two confused.

They say, oh, I just expect a guy to pay for me. The problem with expectations is you can come off very entitled as Teal pointed to, or even kind of grouchy or snobby was the word you used Teal. And expectations and gratitude are usually, they just don't go very well together.

It's something you put on the other person. And it's like, if they don't meet that expectation, well, they are bad. So you end up kind of walking around with this perception that men are either neutral because they did the expectation or bad because they didn't.

That's not a good place to be. I would much rather be, even if you want a more polarized relationship, wouldn't you rather be in the position of, well, I'm giving gratitude and I'm giving appreciation. And that's where standards very much differs from expectations.

If you have a standard you want the guy to pay, you can still have that standard met, but you don't walk in with that expectation. You say, I'm going to offer and I'm okay to pay. The offer isn't fake.

It's like, I'm okay to do it, but I probably won't see him again just because it's my standard that I would prefer a guy steps in and does that for me. And then if he does pay, you get the best of both worlds because you've he's declined. You get to feel like the woman and he gets appreciation.

So you get to appreciate him because you weren't actually expecting it in the first place. So I think it's kind of a win-win-win in terms of the type of relationship you're looking to build, applying standards and gratitude instead of expectations and snobbishness or disapproval and basically making everyone kind of feel comfortable with it. And I do want to add here, I'd like to approach Teal of bringing it up if you're not sure.

I think that's not done enough and is a really good way to approach it actually.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah. I mean, again, dating is just testing. Are we compatible, right?

And this is such a beautiful test of compatibility. How do we approach money? It's a first conflict.

And it's a first conflict. Exactly. How do we approach conflict around money and not making it weird without, like you said, it was just, just about building a friendship.

And I always love to encourage all first dates. It's just about, do we have the basis of a friendship here? Can we actually connect as two human beings without this having to be anything else?

Can we relate to each other in a healthy, beautiful way? And so even if that standard wasn't met and you're like, I really would like a guy that would pay before you write them off completely, I would say, lean into that conversation and say, Hey, you know, I noticed that we paid half and I was totally fine for that. But moving forward, it does feel really good to me to feel that the man can kind of be more of that chivalrous, you know, role.

Are you open to that? Would you be open to doing that in the future and just seeing where he goes? Because I think sometimes, and correct me if I'm wrong, Mark, I know you haven't been in the dating pool in a while, but I can imagine it's really hard as men to know what does the woman want, right?

We don't want to make her feel like, you know, not empowered by saying, Oh, I'll pay for you. Because there are some very extreme feminist women that are like, how dare you pay for me? You know, I can pay for myself.

So we don't want to insult women, but then we also don't want to insult them by paying for not paying for them. It's a doozy minefield for men. So just remember, my sweet ladies, that our poor men are trying every day to navigate how to make us happy and there are no rules anymore.

So we have to give them the benefit of the doubt.

[Speaker 1]
And as Teal says here, what one woman loves will greatly upset another. So a guy can't necessarily know that in advance. I do think if you're looking more for the declines, it's a little bit iffy at that point.

That said, I like Teal bringing it up to him and especially if his response is positive and he does allude to something like, Oh, I'm so sorry. I really just wasn't sure. I once went on a date with this woman, offered to pay.

She got really offended. That's probably a good guy. If he has a more awkward or sort of weird response to you bringing that up, you probably want to filter him out there.

Teal, one question that I reckon the listeners might have on this. Curious to hear your thoughts. Let's say the guy invites you out to a restaurant that's well beyond your budget.

So it's very hard for you to offer legitimately and actually mean it. Your solution?

[Speaker 2]
Ooh, on the spot. What would I do in this situation? Gosh, what would I do in this situation?

[Speaker 1]
I can share my thoughts.

[Speaker 2]
You tell your thoughts, then I'll think about it from my house. Cause I genuinely like, damn, what would I do? That's tough.

[Speaker 1]
Say something right there and then, which is, Hey, first of all, you reward the behavior that you want, which is he's A, asking you out. That's good behavior. And B, he's actually asking you out somewhere nice.

So you've got two instances of good behavior already. So always reward the behavior you want first. So, Hey, I really appreciate you taking the lead and asking me out somewhere so nice.

That means a lot to me. Or that makes me feel good, grateful, whatever the feeling word is. Have to be honest.

I can't, or I can't contribute there. I would say that isn't within my budget or I can't contribute fully if you're looking for that to be within my budget. Is that okay with you?

And nine times out of 10, the guy will say, Oh, are you kidding? Like totally. I invited you out cause I didn't expect you to contribute.

But just very occasionally, you'll get a guy that goes, okay, no worries. We can go somewhere cheaper, which is not the ideal response, but at least, you know, and you've saved yourself the awkward conversation on the date. So again, it's thanks so much for doing that part.

Going to be completely clear. It's not my budget and want to be honest to check in if that's okay with you. Most of the time the guy will go.

Yep. That's totally cool.

[Speaker 2]
And then it's, you don't have to worry about it once you're there. I think that's a beautiful response. And I think for me, I wasn't even thinking about ahead of time.

I think it was like in the moment, if I'm at the restaurant and I'm like, Oh, what do I say? I think if I were in that place, I didn't know it was going to be a fancy restaurant. And then I just show up and I'm like, Oh shit, this is expensive.

I guess I would probably say something like, you know, it feels so wonderful to be here, right? Being in that beautiful feminine feeling messages, it feels so wonderful to be here with you. I am noticing this is outside of my budget, but I would love to maybe offer to pay for dessert if you want to take care of dinner, something like that, where again, you're still making a gesture that you want to be part of the initiating and fairness, but giving them that out to say, Oh no, no, I've got you.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. I love that. And Teal, how do you navigate?

I'm curious to get your thoughts on this. As time moves on, let's say the guy does pay for the first couple of days, but maybe you're a high earning woman. You kind of know that you have similar salary to him or within 60, 70% of his.

He's paying, he seems happy to do so. At what point for you or your clients, does it start to become a little different? Are certain dates always that way?

Or because you start going out to lunch, you start doing different things. And maybe the guy does make a similar-ish amount to you. Is there a point where you intervene, not intervene, is there a point where you interject and say, Hey, if you want me to start contributing, like I'm happy to, or do you just kind of lean back, appreciate him every time, offer each time, probably be rejected each time and then appreciate it each time?

What's your approach to the continuation after the first date?

[Speaker 2]
Yeah. I think I have a different approach on this. I mean, probably most feminine energy coaches would be like, just keep leaning back and enjoy receiving and never offer.

But I am a Libra. I'm all about fairness. And my relationship has always started out from the basis of friendship of 50, 50.

So I personally encourage to just allow there to be a natural give and take or give and receive of the relationship as it continues to progress on. I think you can enjoy receiving after the first few dates, but to me, I would genuinely feel uncomfortable if he's just continuing to give and give and give. And I know that that is something that makes men feel good and women get to be in this place of receiving and that feels good.

But as a equal contributor woman, and as another equal, you know, powerful woman, I feel good also being able to give in ways that, you know, allows him to receive. And I think that there's really just a value for each person to have to sit with for themselves and ask themselves, where is that comfort level for them?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, I think you've got to use your intuition with this one. I sort of say to women, look, keep receiving if it's feeling really good for you, you can do that, and I'm okay with that, but use your intuition. If this is a guy who makes five times as much as you, you can probably intuit that as long as you're receiving and lit up by what he's doing, and you can give back to a man in lots of other ways, and I'm not just referring to sex, there's many, many ways that you can show you're lit up by him.

And if there's a significant difference, then you can probably go on receiving for a decent chunk of time, make your little contributions to ice cream and stuff along the way, and it's fine. But if you kind of know that, okay, we do make similar amounts, he's taken me to expensive restaurants every time, then in reality, your final relationship, if you think forward, it's probably going to be a little more friendship-like. And I don't mean to say it's not going to be boyfriend-girlfriend, but realistically, in terms of at least money, if your incomes are the same or very similar, you're probably going to end up having a reasonably equal contribution to a lot of house stuff.

That's just how it's going to end up. If he's making 5X you, that's not going to be the case. You can receive for a lot longer in dating.

However, if it's not that case, if it's not that way, as Teal says, that's where I think throughout the dating phase, I would start going, hey, totally cool if you want to split this. If you're happy to do it, I'm happy to receive, I love it, it makes me feel great, but I'm also happy to contribute here. So I think you've got to kind of use...