If you have an uneven hip, have you looked into / tried chiropractic treatment? Granted, IMO the effectiveness of chiropractic treatments is highly dependent on how skillful the chiro is, a lot more so than other forms of paramedical treatments like physio / massage, and I don't have a good recommendation for you anymore since my chiro is retiring the end of this month. But if you can find a good chiro, it can be life changing and soooo liberating. I swear to god every time I see my chiro, I come out feeling like a fresh new person.
people bash chiros but i also have a great chiro. sure it's temporary but so is massage therapy and i get way more relief from the chiro for my lower back.
Gerbs
02-17-2026 09:59 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by unit
(Post 9211185)
picking up a 2k tab for your girlfriends friends... miss me with that shit.
thinking asian culture means 'crazy rich asians' is not normal asian culture.
treating your friends is one thing but treating a big group of people you barely know is ridiculous.
girls take the 1-3 top tier examples around them and apply that sample size to all the bfs in their lives.
When it infects a girls group, all the men take equal damage
BIC_BAWS
02-17-2026 10:00 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by whitev70r
(Post 9211162)
I think Mikey means Filipino culture which is definitely a lot more showy, BIG, live on debt than other Asian cultures like Canto or thrifty Chinamen ... but then what do I know, I could be wrong.
My family's accounting business deals with a lot of Filipino clients.. and ngl they're almost worse than brown clients. Indian guys you know what they're gonna be like. Filipinos, in this specific experience, are like those who are two-faced af and expect the world for a "referral". Where tf does that entitlement come from?
We also have a client that makes very good money, but sends back almost 90% of their money to relatives in the Philippines. That's some bullshit that it's expected and societally seen as "high tier". Just sounds like a bunch of deadbeats asking for money.
I have tried dating Filipino, and I just wouldn't do it again. There's too much of a culture clash and I've done a lot of growing and healing with my own Asian generation trauma, that dating into a Filipino culture seems like a step back. I understand there's a lot more to it than the negatives, like family cohesiveness, but it's not for me. I decided as a kid to cut out Asian toxicity in my life and I'm sticking to it.
(there's also a lot of toxicity in Viet culture / Viet-Chinese culture, first-hand experience)
Quote:
Originally Posted by unit
(Post 9211186)
people bash chiros but i also have a great chiro. sure it's temporary but so is massage therapy and i get way more relief from the chiro for my lower back.
Having been in a few consecutive car accidents, I would say chiro gets me 90% of the way there. About a week of relief. IMS/Physio combined with Active Rehab really moves the needle into recovery. Happy to say, I've been pain-free for about 5 years. Tho granted I haven't seen the gym in just as long. Working on my car/detailing my car still puts me out the next day, but I no longer get PSIS pain from just sitting in my chair or lying in bed.
bcrdukes
02-17-2026 10:17 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gerbs
(Post 9211184)
Been thinking the same since dating has went up 100% in costs since 2021 vs 2026. Younger girls 19 - 25 offer to pay at least 25-33% of the time, when I was previously single. Now I at 25-28 range, out of 7 girls recently, only 2 offered. Maybe in their head they're like oh, he has two cars, business and his own place, he should pay cause he has money. Which is not fully true!
Wrote it off as cost of being 30, pay 2 play like Porsche.
Also noticed
- more ghosting
- OLD Vancouver 24-28 asian pool is dead
- Toronto pool looks 10x better, but 3x population
- talked to 7 girls in person in the last month, 4 turned into numbers, success rate is pretty high
- expectations from social media retardedly high, but valentines day content + delulu friends don't help
- Is expecting $35-75+ dinner + drinks or activity weekly a dating norm, I already miss turtling at home lol
Out of curiosity, but do people still meet up for coffee for first dates? Or is that a sign of "the guy is poor" :derp:
There was a recent article (more like an opinion piece) on dating in The Globe and Mail. When I read this, I thought of you.
Kelsey Rolfe
Special to The Globe and Mail
Published February 12, 2026
Updated 2 hours ago
For Subscribers
When Jennifer Singh was dating in her 20s, she believed in splitting the tab. She was raised to be a financially independent woman, and going Dutch on a date embodied that.
But her mindset has since changed. While she’s recently separated and not yet jumping back into the dating pool, she knows what she wants when she starts dating again.
Men make more money than women, on average, said Ms. Singh, a 45-year-old business owner in Vaughan, Ont. Women also spend more time, effort and money to get ready for a date, she said, pointing to the cost of hair and other personal care products.
“It’s fair [for them] to pay for a date. It’s not unreasonable,” she said. Ms. Singh said she also sees men paying as demonstrating what they’re bringing to the table in a potential relationship, given that many women are highly educated, financially independent and working on themselves.
Online and in group chats, daters are revisiting the age-old question of who should pay on dates – and drifting back to traditional gender norms. Some modern daters are highlighting the gender wage gap and “beauty tax” – a term for the extra costs women pay to meet societal standards for beauty – as reasons for men to foot the bill in heterosexual dating.
Laura Hammond, a 44-year-old fractional human resources leader in Ottawa, said the “running cost” of getting ready for dates is real: She estimated she spends $70 to $80 a month on her nails, and $300 every four to five months on hair cuts and getting her highlights done.
Ms. Hammond said she used to pro-actively offer to split the bill on first dates. Now, she tends to let her date take the lead. But she said she does generally take an “equitable” approach to paying for dates. She recently started seeing someone new; after he planned a “very nice” first date and paid for both of them, she reciprocated the gesture on their second date.
“I appreciated that he wanted to treat me [on the first date] and I wanted to signal my interest back to him,” she said. “If we’re to continue to date I want it to feel like an equal partnership.”
Expectations around who should pay for a date largely follow gender norms, according to a recent Simplii Financial survey of 1,500 Canadians aged 18 and older. Seventy-two per cent of men who weren’t in relationships said they’d expect to pay on a date, and 39 per cent of women said they would expect their date to pay. Daters were split on splitting: 47 per cent of women preferred it, compared to 23 per cent of men.
Respondents in relationships had similar responses, with 62 per cent of men saying they primarily pay and 36 per cent of women saying their partner primarily pays.
“Society is changing but some traditions still persist,” said Carissa Lucreziano, “vice-president of financial planning and advice at CIBC, of which Simplii is a digital banking division. “The act of paying for a date, it’s not just about the money, it’s more about the values and the expectations around it.”
Mitch Hermansen, a 38-year-old fundraiser in Vancouver, said he considers it the “standard thing” to pay for a first date. “Probably it is some traditional masculinity norms, for sure, but I typically ask, so I’ll pay,” he said. Mr. Hermansen estimated he spent around $500 on dating in the past month.
On second and third dates, he said he’d usually offer to grab the bill, but appreciates if his date offers. He said that while he’s generally happy to pay for dates as a gesture, he doesn’t want it to fall solely to him.
“It probably wouldn’t be the relationship for me if I was expected to pay [for everything],” he said.
Damona Hoffman, a California-based relationship strategist and host of the Dates & Mates podcast, said she sees the conversation about who pays the bill as connected to the rise and recent fall of dating apps. When the apps took off midway through the last decade, the volume of first dates people were going on increased.
“That put a lot of stress on men who date women, particularly in shelling out a lot of money for dates that many times didn’t evolve in the same way they had prior to that point,” she said. “If you’re paying for it all, it changes the way that you show up.”
With seemingly infinite options, ghosting increased and so did the sense that dating was impersonal, Ms. Hoffman said.
“That’s the rise of, ‘Let’s go Dutch. We don’t know where this is going to go. Let’s meet in the middle here and not put too much effort, money or emphasis on what the outcome of this date will be and just see where it goes,’” she said. “That led to very transactional, very short-term, very dissatisfying dating.”
Ms. Hoffman said that at a moment when more daters are experiencing dating app fatigue, she sees the reversion to wanting men to pay for dates as a desire for intentional dating.
“It’s not about showing off your resources,” she said. “It’s about saying, ‘You’re choosing me. You’re not doing this every day of the week. You’re making an investment in building a relationship with me, specifically.’”
But for Eden Osmar, a 30-year-old copywriter in Calgary, the sense that someone is making an investment is part of the reason why she generally prefers to split the bill.
Ms. Osmar said she appreciates when a man offers to pay for the date, and sometimes takes them up on it. But she doesn’t want “someone to invest their money on top of their time if it’s something I don’t see going anywhere.”
Ms. Hoffman noted that among LGBTQ+ daters, there are no set norms around who pays for a date, though sometimes the person who makes the initial ask pays the bill.
“Everybody wants to feel like they’re being chosen, and like someone is doing something nice for them and investing in time with them,” she said.
unit
02-17-2026 10:27 AM
coffee just makes sense as a first date because you can end the date in 15m if it's not going well or you can sit and chat for an hour if it is. if someone wants to have a first date to get a 'free meal' that is like homeless person behaviour.
donk.
02-17-2026 10:28 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by unit
(Post 9211186)
people bash chiros but i also have a great chiro. sure it's temporary but so is massage therapy and i get way more relief from the chiro for my lower back.
Alot of people blame their own lazyness to workout on chiros.
They think a chiro will solve their 20 years of sitting on the couch and their body catching up with them.
I dislocated my 1st rib years ago, left half of my body sat about an inch lower than the right, bad pain for 3 days, chiro snapped me back into place on 3rd day, instant relief, back to normal soon after.
I slept weird on a plane once while heading to vacation, could not walk for more than 20 minutes due to a kink in my lower back. Chiropractor said my pelvis was misaligned or some shit, (left leg not even with right), snapped me back into place, vacation saved.
Chiros are GODSENDS to this planet.
spoon.ek9
02-17-2026 10:29 AM
Boy oh boy, after reading the last couple of pages there is a LOT to say regarding modern dating. Again, I do feel like we need a dedicated thread on this topic because it is an absolute shit show out there and the criteria/demands/insults coming our way as men are getting more and more insane.
Silver lining is that there are indeed girls out there who haven't completely fallen for this bullshit but they are few and far between. Almost every girl out there has heard the same demands from their friend group, influencers, etc by now. The trick really is to call out the bs, ask them to logically explain why said demands are reasonable and if they can't do it, move on. Some of them are in way too deep to ever change their minds and it's ok. They will hit the wall one day and end up alone and used up by the rich men who only wanted to sleep with them and string them along for awhile. Some will get what they want but they'll ultimately be unhappy because the demands never end and only get more extreme.
donk.
02-17-2026 10:31 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by unit
(Post 9211192)
coffee just makes sense as a first date because you can end the date in 15m if it's not going well or you can sit and chat for an hour if it is. if someone wants to have a first date to get a 'free meal' that is like homeless person behaviour.
POGGERS
Someone please clip this and send it to all ofgerbsprospective dates
EvoFire
02-17-2026 10:35 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gerbs
(Post 9211184)
Been thinking the same since dating has went up 100% in costs since 2021 vs 2026. Younger girls 19 - 25 offer to pay at least 25-33% of the time, when I was previously single. Now I at 25-28 range, out of 7 girls recently, only 2 offered. Maybe in their head they're like oh, he has two cars, business and his own place, he should pay cause he has money. Which is not fully true!
Wrote it off as cost of being 30, pay 2 play like Porsche.
Also noticed
- more ghosting
- OLD Vancouver 24-28 asian pool is dead
- Toronto pool looks 10x better, but 3x population
- talked to 7 girls in person in the last month, 4 turned into numbers, success rate is pretty high
- expectations from social media retardedly high, but valentines day content + delulu friends don't help
- Is expecting $35-75+ dinner + drinks or activity weekly a dating norm, I already miss turtling at home lol
There's a general delusion that owning a business means success. Yes you are your own boss but it doesn't mean you are automatically raking it in. And people don't seem to understand that revenue != profit.
Though $35-$75/ week doesn't seem that bad. I mean come up, I go to the food court with my wife and it's almost $40. We try to go out for lunch once a week just the two of us and it's easily $50 if we go eat at a Korean place. $75 doesn't even buy you 2 mains and 2 drinks at Cactus.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bcrdukes
(Post 9211191)
Out of curiosity, but do people still meet up for coffee for first dates? Or is that a sign of "the guy is poor" :derp:
There was a recent article (more like an opinion piece) on dating in The Globe and Mail. When I read this, I thought of you.
Kelsey Rolfe
Special to The Globe and Mail
Published February 12, 2026
Updated 2 hours ago
For Subscribers
When Jennifer Singh was dating in her 20s, she believed in splitting the tab. She was raised to be a financially independent woman, and going Dutch on a date embodied that.
But her mindset has since changed. While she’s recently separated and not yet jumping back into the dating pool, she knows what she wants when she starts dating again.
Men make more money than women, on average, said Ms. Singh, a 45-year-old business owner in Vaughan, Ont. Women also spend more time, effort and money to get ready for a date, she said, pointing to the cost of hair and other personal care products.
“It’s fair [for them] to pay for a date. It’s not unreasonable,” she said. Ms. Singh said she also sees men paying as demonstrating what they’re bringing to the table in a potential relationship, given that many women are highly educated, financially independent and working on themselves.
Online and in group chats, daters are revisiting the age-old question of who should pay on dates – and drifting back to traditional gender norms. Some modern daters are highlighting the gender wage gap and “beauty tax” – a term for the extra costs women pay to meet societal standards for beauty – as reasons for men to foot the bill in heterosexual dating.
Laura Hammond, a 44-year-old fractional human resources leader in Ottawa, said the “running cost” of getting ready for dates is real: She estimated she spends $70 to $80 a month on her nails, and $300 every four to five months on hair cuts and getting her highlights done.
Ms. Hammond said she used to pro-actively offer to split the bill on first dates. Now, she tends to let her date take the lead. But she said she does generally take an “equitable” approach to paying for dates. She recently started seeing someone new; after he planned a “very nice” first date and paid for both of them, she reciprocated the gesture on their second date.
“I appreciated that he wanted to treat me [on the first date] and I wanted to signal my interest back to him,” she said. “If we’re to continue to date I want it to feel like an equal partnership.”
Expectations around who should pay for a date largely follow gender norms, according to a recent Simplii Financial survey of 1,500 Canadians aged 18 and older. Seventy-two per cent of men who weren’t in relationships said they’d expect to pay on a date, and 39 per cent of women said they would expect their date to pay. Daters were split on splitting: 47 per cent of women preferred it, compared to 23 per cent of men.
Respondents in relationships had similar responses, with 62 per cent of men saying they primarily pay and 36 per cent of women saying their partner primarily pays.
“Society is changing but some traditions still persist,” said Carissa Lucreziano, “vice-president of financial planning and advice at CIBC, of which Simplii is a digital banking division. “The act of paying for a date, it’s not just about the money, it’s more about the values and the expectations around it.”
Mitch Hermansen, a 38-year-old fundraiser in Vancouver, said he considers it the “standard thing” to pay for a first date. “Probably it is some traditional masculinity norms, for sure, but I typically ask, so I’ll pay,” he said. Mr. Hermansen estimated he spent around $500 on dating in the past month.
On second and third dates, he said he’d usually offer to grab the bill, but appreciates if his date offers. He said that while he’s generally happy to pay for dates as a gesture, he doesn’t want it to fall solely to him.
“It probably wouldn’t be the relationship for me if I was expected to pay [for everything],” he said.
Damona Hoffman, a California-based relationship strategist and host of the Dates & Mates podcast, said she sees the conversation about who pays the bill as connected to the rise and recent fall of dating apps. When the apps took off midway through the last decade, the volume of first dates people were going on increased.
“That put a lot of stress on men who date women, particularly in shelling out a lot of money for dates that many times didn’t evolve in the same way they had prior to that point,” she said. “If you’re paying for it all, it changes the way that you show up.”
With seemingly infinite options, ghosting increased and so did the sense that dating was impersonal, Ms. Hoffman said.
“That’s the rise of, ‘Let’s go Dutch. We don’t know where this is going to go. Let’s meet in the middle here and not put too much effort, money or emphasis on what the outcome of this date will be and just see where it goes,’” she said. “That led to very transactional, very short-term, very dissatisfying dating.”
Ms. Hoffman said that at a moment when more daters are experiencing dating app fatigue, she sees the reversion to wanting men to pay for dates as a desire for intentional dating.
“It’s not about showing off your resources,” she said. “It’s about saying, ‘You’re choosing me. You’re not doing this every day of the week. You’re making an investment in building a relationship with me, specifically.’”
But for Eden Osmar, a 30-year-old copywriter in Calgary, the sense that someone is making an investment is part of the reason why she generally prefers to split the bill.
Ms. Osmar said she appreciates when a man offers to pay for the date, and sometimes takes them up on it. But she doesn’t want “someone to invest their money on top of their time if it’s something I don’t see going anywhere.”
Ms. Hoffman noted that among LGBTQ+ daters, there are no set norms around who pays for a date, though sometimes the person who makes the initial ask pays the bill.
“Everybody wants to feel like they’re being chosen, and like someone is doing something nice for them and investing in time with them,” she said.
I would have zero problems paying for a first date, as long as you aren't expecting a bottle of wine at Crocodile. Not that I would know since theoretically, I would not be dating ever again.
bcrdukes
02-17-2026 10:36 AM
lol imagine your Tinder profile saying something like "no homeless person behaviour"
EvoFire
02-17-2026 10:37 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by bcrdukes
(Post 9211198)
lol imagine your Tinder profile saying something like "no homeless person behaviour"
What's homeless person behaviour?
donk.
02-17-2026 10:40 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by EvoFire
(Post 9211201)
What's homeless person behaviour?
Post 505
Traum
02-17-2026 10:42 AM
I came across this a few days ago, and I almost couldn't believe it was a topic being covered by mainstream media (then again, it was approaching Valentine's Day...)
Online and in group chats, daters are revisiting the age-old question of who should pay on dates – and drifting back to traditional gender norms. Some modern daters are highlighting the gender wage gap and “beauty tax” – a term for the extra costs women pay to meet societal standards for beauty – as reasons for men to foot the bill in heterosexual dating.
As an open minded and conservatively progressive thinking man -- whatever that means LOL~ -- this "beauty tax" thing is such a total BS. I am not even thinking about the feminism ideals and such, but pretty much all the Vogue magazine type of articles I've come across in the last 30 years have been trying to tell woman that they should only be dressing and dolling up for themselves, to make themselves happy, instead of trying to please men or meet societal norm. And now the ladies are saying men need to cover the bill bcos they have a beauty tax that men don't have to pay for?
Gosh you know that Trojan / Durex costs money too, right? Or should I just raw dawg it next time then?
GLOW
02-17-2026 11:14 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by unit
(Post 9211186)
people bash chiros but i also have a great chiro. sure it's temporary but so is massage therapy and i get way more relief from the chiro for my lower back.
i misread this as churros being in this thread... double fisting :lol
girls take the 1-3 top tier examples around them and apply that sample size to all the bfs in their lives.
When it infects a girls group, all the men take equal damage
AOE damage :lol
RabidRat
02-17-2026 12:19 PM
Sorry, off-topic post on fitness accountability!
---
Training for a Triathlon, Day 4
Spoiler!
Quote:
Originally Posted by red kryptonite
(Post 9210679)
lol who the fuck does Subaru think they are making you jump through hoops for $750 rebate.
Subaru Triathlon Series, Milton - June 7th
Try-A-Tri race: 375m Swim, 10km Bike, *2.5km Run*
Conditions: 4°C, clear
[xxxxxxxxxx]
Completion: 2.50 km
[xxxxxxxxxx]
Pace: 6.8 km/h
[xxxxxxxxxx]
Mental Anguish: peak HR 180 bpm
[xxxxxxxxxx]
Athletic Condition: very obesity
[xxxxxxxxxx]
Weeks Remaining til Race Day: 15/16
[xxxxxxxxxx]
supafamous
02-17-2026 12:23 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by RabidRat
(Post 9211224)
Sorry, off-topic post on fitness accountability!
---
Training for a Triathlon, Day 4
Spoiler!
Subaru Triathlon Series, Milton - June 7th
Try-A-Tri race: 375m Swim, 10km Bike, *2.5km Run*
Conditions: 4°C, clear
[xxxxxxxxxx]
Completion: 2.50 km
[xxxxxxxxxx]
Pace: 6.8 km/h
[xxxxxxxxxx]
Mental Anguish: peak HR 180 bpm
[xxxxxxxxxx]
Athletic Condition: very obesity
[xxxxxxxxxx]
Weeks Remaining til Race Day: 15/16
[xxxxxxxxxx]
Shit, you're actually doing this. Good luck!
bcrdukes
02-17-2026 12:38 PM
I guess he'll have to post a pic of his Subaru too!
GS8
02-17-2026 12:39 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by mikemhg
(Post 9211111)
I'm not going to lie, I even held by shotgun one night contemplating some seriously dark thoughts.
Before ever going down this path again, always remember what you overcame to get to where you are now. Remember who was there with you and don't remember who wasn't.
And if you're still doubtful, you just have to look in the mirror to find something you love.
(Yeah this sounds gay but mental health isn't something to neglect. The universe has been chaotic since the big bang. It's imperative to treat our minds like a sanctuary amidst it all).
Since moving to a smaller town, I filtered out a lot of toxicity (politics, news, shitty people, danky environments among others) and it's been so much easier to breathe and just enjoy the simplicity in my hobbies, my work and those people I want to have in my circle. Just peace and quiet with cycles of adventure and rest.
GS8
02-17-2026 01:07 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by whitev70r
(Post 9211162)
I think Mikey means Filipino culture which is definitely a lot more showy, BIG, live on debt than other Asian cultures like Canto or thrifty Chinamen ... but then what do I know, I could be wrong.
Filipinos are the most lemming ass culture there is. One influenzer does something and suddenly they ALLLLL want to do that one thing so they can 'belong' to the influenzer's circle :lol :lol
And (this is for a separate thread)
The amount of Flip TFWs who qualify for $40K vehicle loans while making $17/ hour is brain rotting to me...
EvoFire
02-17-2026 02:36 PM
Tried to work out after my interview today, proceeded to puke 5 minutes in. Yeah not happening
Gerbs
02-17-2026 05:05 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by bcrdukes
(Post 9211191)
Out of curiosity, but do people still meet up for coffee for first dates? Or is that a sign of "the guy is poor" :derp:
There was a recent article (more like an opinion piece) on dating in The Globe and Mail. When I read this, I thought of you.
Kelsey Rolfe
Special to The Globe and Mail
Published February 12, 2026
Updated 2 hours ago
For Subscribers
When Jennifer Singh was dating in her 20s, she believed in splitting the tab. She was raised to be a financially independent woman, and going Dutch on a date embodied that.
But her mindset has since changed. While she’s recently separated and not yet jumping back into the dating pool, she knows what she wants when she starts dating again.
Men make more money than women, on average, said Ms. Singh, a 45-year-old business owner in Vaughan, Ont. Women also spend more time, effort and money to get ready for a date, she said, pointing to the cost of hair and other personal care products.
“It’s fair [for them] to pay for a date. It’s not unreasonable,” she said. Ms. Singh said she also sees men paying as demonstrating what they’re bringing to the table in a potential relationship, given that many women are highly educated, financially independent and working on themselves.
Online and in group chats, daters are revisiting the age-old question of who should pay on dates – and drifting back to traditional gender norms. Some modern daters are highlighting the gender wage gap and “beauty tax” – a term for the extra costs women pay to meet societal standards for beauty – as reasons for men to foot the bill in heterosexual dating.
Laura Hammond, a 44-year-old fractional human resources leader in Ottawa, said the “running cost” of getting ready for dates is real: She estimated she spends $70 to $80 a month on her nails, and $300 every four to five months on hair cuts and getting her highlights done.
Ms. Hammond said she used to pro-actively offer to split the bill on first dates. Now, she tends to let her date take the lead. But she said she does generally take an “equitable” approach to paying for dates. She recently started seeing someone new; after he planned a “very nice” first date and paid for both of them, she reciprocated the gesture on their second date.
“I appreciated that he wanted to treat me [on the first date] and I wanted to signal my interest back to him,” she said. “If we’re to continue to date I want it to feel like an equal partnership.”
Expectations around who should pay for a date largely follow gender norms, according to a recent Simplii Financial survey of 1,500 Canadians aged 18 and older. Seventy-two per cent of men who weren’t in relationships said they’d expect to pay on a date, and 39 per cent of women said they would expect their date to pay. Daters were split on splitting: 47 per cent of women preferred it, compared to 23 per cent of men.
Respondents in relationships had similar responses, with 62 per cent of men saying they primarily pay and 36 per cent of women saying their partner primarily pays.
“Society is changing but some traditions still persist,” said Carissa Lucreziano, “vice-president of financial planning and advice at CIBC, of which Simplii is a digital banking division. “The act of paying for a date, it’s not just about the money, it’s more about the values and the expectations around it.”
Mitch Hermansen, a 38-year-old fundraiser in Vancouver, said he considers it the “standard thing” to pay for a first date. “Probably it is some traditional masculinity norms, for sure, but I typically ask, so I’ll pay,” he said. Mr. Hermansen estimated he spent around $500 on dating in the past month.
On second and third dates, he said he’d usually offer to grab the bill, but appreciates if his date offers. He said that while he’s generally happy to pay for dates as a gesture, he doesn’t want it to fall solely to him.
“It probably wouldn’t be the relationship for me if I was expected to pay [for everything],” he said.
Damona Hoffman, a California-based relationship strategist and host of the Dates & Mates podcast, said she sees the conversation about who pays the bill as connected to the rise and recent fall of dating apps. When the apps took off midway through the last decade, the volume of first dates people were going on increased.
“That put a lot of stress on men who date women, particularly in shelling out a lot of money for dates that many times didn’t evolve in the same way they had prior to that point,” she said. “If you’re paying for it all, it changes the way that you show up.”
With seemingly infinite options, ghosting increased and so did the sense that dating was impersonal, Ms. Hoffman said.
“That’s the rise of, ‘Let’s go Dutch. We don’t know where this is going to go. Let’s meet in the middle here and not put too much effort, money or emphasis on what the outcome of this date will be and just see where it goes,’” she said. “That led to very transactional, very short-term, very dissatisfying dating.”
Ms. Hoffman said that at a moment when more daters are experiencing dating app fatigue, she sees the reversion to wanting men to pay for dates as a desire for intentional dating.
“It’s not about showing off your resources,” she said. “It’s about saying, ‘You’re choosing me. You’re not doing this every day of the week. You’re making an investment in building a relationship with me, specifically.’”
But for Eden Osmar, a 30-year-old copywriter in Calgary, the sense that someone is making an investment is part of the reason why she generally prefers to split the bill.
Ms. Osmar said she appreciates when a man offers to pay for the date, and sometimes takes them up on it. But she doesn’t want “someone to invest their money on top of their time if it’s something I don’t see going anywhere.”
Ms. Hoffman noted that among LGBTQ+ daters, there are no set norms around who pays for a date, though sometimes the person who makes the initial ask pays the bill.
“Everybody wants to feel like they’re being chosen, and like someone is doing something nice for them and investing in time with them,” she said.
I'd say 20% yes, but if you're 28-30 (my experience) and you're talking to a pretty girl who has marriable qualities, sometimes you want to pay to win just so you can open the blind box and hopefully exit the dating game.
However, in the last 10+ date, I've only had 2 girls with no mutuals, so I kind of have an idea what type of person they are before meeting up, especially if I approached in person.
I do filter very hard and won't waste money on anyone I don't think I'd marry. If I'm at all iffy, feel low-interest or hookup, I'd toss out cafe, smoothie or drinks offer and not care if it goes through or not.
Quote:
Originally Posted by donk.
(Post 9211196)
POGGERS
Someone please clip this and send it to all ofgerbsprospective dates
at this stage, popping meta glasses on to show ppl I ain't making this shit up lmao
Gerbs
02-17-2026 05:59 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by EvoFire
(Post 9211197)
There's a general delusion that owning a business means success. Yes you are your own boss but it doesn't mean you are automatically raking it in. And people don't seem to understand that revenue != profit.
gotta sign a pre-nup to protect them from a fat lease / payroll lol
Quote:
Originally Posted by EvoFire
(Post 9211197)
Though $35-$75/ week doesn't seem that bad. I mean come up, I go to the food court with my wife and it's almost $40. We try to go out for lunch once a week just the two of us and it's easily $50 if we go eat at a Korean place. $75 doesn't even buy you 2 mains and 2 drinks at Cactus.
$35-75/pp x 2 x 1-2 dates = $140-300/week? Not bad cost of finding a wife, but that $1,200/month would love to go towards a 911.
No longer doing the retarded 3 dates a week, at this rate, I'm gonna be immune to pretty girls
mikemhg
02-17-2026 06:02 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by GS8
(Post 9211241)
Filipinos are the most lemming ass culture there is. One influenzer does something and suddenly they ALLLLL want to do that one thing so they can 'belong' to the influenzer's circle :lol :lol
And (this is for a separate thread)
The amount of Flip TFWs who qualify for $40K vehicle loans while making $17/ hour is brain rotting to me...
I wish I had you to educate me on this before I took the ride.
This is MOST definitely true. I had no idea about Labubus until my 38 year old Filipina started rocking a few on her LV purse :lol
My brain wanted to explode.
mikemhg
02-17-2026 06:04 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gerbs
(Post 9211294)
gotta sign a pre-nup to protect them from a fat lease / payroll lol
$35-75/pp x 2 x 1-2 dates = $140-300/week? Not bad cost of finding a wife, but that $1,200/month would love to go towards a 911.
No longer doing the retarded 3 dates a week, at this rate, I'm gonna be immune to pretty girls
Before I met my ex I remember going on 5 dates in a single week, dropped like $800 in a single week alone on drinks and food.
100% will not be doing that this time :lol
supafamous
02-17-2026 06:22 PM
Filipinos run the best Church's chicken though. All the East Indian run ones make terrible fried chicken (we should make a list of ethnicities that suck at making fried chicken).
