Quote:
Originally Posted by MMM
Either way, I don't know if you are going to get a lot of sympathy from people, as you placed yourself in that situation, and what self-respecting man lets his blind date pay for his meal?
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Woah, hold up, MMM. You and I often agree, but I am going to have to take a stand here. She asked for the date, she chose the restaurant, and she said she would pay. The rules are different now (yay feminism! <- not sarcasm), and now asker pays,
regardless of gender/sex. She asked, she pays. Next time, if this were to develop into a regular thing and he set the date and chose the restaurant, he would pay. No self-respecting
person wants to be taken for a ride by someone who doesn't put in their fair share.
But this is besides the point, because this sounds lot more like a business deal than a date. She wanted conversation and company, but she was also willing to help him network. I would be fully expecting, had I been the OP, for the other shoe to drop and find out, professionally, what she wanted from me. I would fully be suspecting it would be private English lessons. They usually are when I am approached in such a way.
I think OP should have asked more questions and presented a more professional "face," but I think calling him out for some misinterpretation of the chivalric code is ludicrous.
When I lived in Korea, I had a business relationship that started out very much like this. She took me places and paid for meals and drinks, and I helped her on high level English conversation (about history, philosophy, sociology, and even helped work on essays she was writing in English). In lieu of getting paid, which would have been illegal (private lessons are not legal in Korea, but they are in Japan), she always picked up the tab. We were not dating.