Principle #4. Women: Offer to pay your share on the first date.

This is your first values test — an opportunity to display your generosity of spirit. If he takes you to dinner, assume you’ll split the check when it comes. If he declines when you proffer your share – as he should – you pay for the movie, the next dinner out, or make him dinner at home. (Debts like this keep for about a week or two, after which time they go into a “Resentment” file. “Would you like some help with that?” when the check comes is not considered by most men to be a sincere offer, but rather, a test.) Don’t trade sex for dinner or other trinkets or gratuities — either by design, or out of a misplaced sense of obligation. No obligation is incurred by spending time with a man, no matter how much money he may have spent on you.

That being said, while some men are quite traditional, and really do prefer to pay for the woman, from my experience in leading our dating discussion group, the number of men who prefer to pay all the time, without some sort of reciprocation from their date, is few and far between. Bottom line, all men want to feel appreciated, and, in this era of women in the workplace, having made demands on men to give up many male privileges over the past thirty or forty years, many men feel resentful when women revert to expecting them to pay every time you go out. (Read Warren Farrell's The Myth of Male Power ("The women's movement has done a wonderful job of freeing women from sex roles, but no one did the same for men.") and Why Men Earn More, for a fascinating discussion of men and women in the workplace.

Some modern women really do prefer to pay for themselves, of course. Match an independent feminist with a traditional man and watch them argue over the check! The idea here is that who pays is one of the first ways men and women send subliminal signals to each other. Frequently, if a man wants to sleep with a woman, he'll be happy to pay for the date. If he's not interested he's less likely to pay. Many women report being more willing to let a man pay if they are interested in getting to know a man further, than if they are not.

Bottom line, if he wants to sleep with her, he'll buy. If she thinks she may want to sleep with him, she'll let him buy. Like others in the animal kingdom, we have elaborate courtship rituals that signal interest and intent. Paying the check is one such ritual – a ritual filled with danger and possibility; the danger of playing your cards poorly and sending a signal you didn't intend to send to your dating partner, or playing your cards well and advancing the relationship to the next step.

Our goal in this forum – and even more effectively in our dating discussion group – is to take control of the signals we're sending and learn to better decipher the signals we're getting. We trade these signals to advance our dating agendas, and to protect both our own feelings and those of our dating partners. (One result of participating in elaborate signaling to each other is to avoid having to reject someone to their face. The, "Sorry but I'm busy," response to an invitation is a rudimentary example.)

Prefer, as some men and women have stated, not to play these games? Unfortunately, if you're dating, the game is being played and you're a part of it. You can ignore it, or pretend that it's not going on, or you can learn to control the signals you're sending and interpret the signals that are being sent to you – and improve your results!

But first, you've got to meet someone with whom to trade signals! If you, like many of us, find yourself between relationships, you can meet single women and men at one of our innovative Bay Area singles events this week. We never leave conversation to chance!(tm) Click to see our schedule: The Meeting Game Salon.

See Principle #3 for the man's financial responsibility on the first date.

How do you handle who pays on the first – and subsequent dates? (Click "Comments," below to see what others have said, and/or to add your comments.)