She expected me to shout her friends because 'the man always pays'

“It sounds to me like your wife doesn’t want a spouse, she wants a sugar daddy who will treat her and her friends.”

Joel Erickson

3 min read

September 20, 2024 - 2:45PM

Man refuses to pay for date's food because she refused to have sex with him

Family Life

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Who should pay on a social outing?

It’s a question that humanity is still grappling with, and one that comes with many answers.

A lot of people will tell you it’s the man’s job to pay, others would say whoever made the invitation, and still others would say everyone has to pay their own way.

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That question reared its ugly head for one newlywed couple when it led to a big falling out after a night out.

Jake* and his new bride Hayley* were celebrating with four of Hayley’s close friends at an “expensive steakhouse” when the issue of the bill was brought up.

Jake was willing to pay for himself and his new wife, but was shocked when Hayley slid him the bill and demanded he pay for the entire thing.

“The man should always pay for the wife and her friends,” she said.

Jake* couldn't believe it when his wife expected him to pay for four of her friends. Picture: iStock

"She started screaming at me"

Jake said he laughed awkwardly at the statement, as they hadn’t discussed this beforehand, but Hayley wasn’t taking no for an answer.

“She says because I’m the man, I should pay,” Jake said.

“I told her the only other person I would pay for would be you, and her friends proceeded to laugh at me and called me a ‘broke husband’.”

Naturally, Jake wasn’t going to take this lying down, so he placed $200 on the table for his and wife’s food before leaving the restaurant.

That wasn’t the end of it though, as Hayley berated Jake when they both got home.

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“She starts screaming at me,” he said.

“She said I made her feel embarrassed, and she’d promised her friends I’d pay (beforehand).

“She said her friends made fun of her on the ride home for marrying a man who can’t pay the bill.

“She’s never acted like this, it was the first time she ever screamed at me like that, so instead of escalating it, I just left.”

Surprisingly, Jake’s family were in agreement with Hayley, saying he should have “just paid the bill”.

"It sounds like your wife wants a sugar daddy"

Jake took to Reddit with his issues, where sanity quickly took over.

“Your wife should have talked to you about it before telling her friends you’d pay, not just assume,” one person wrote.

“The audacity to just casually push over a $700 bill and then say ‘well the man should always pay’,” another person wrote.

“It sounds to me like your wife doesn’t want a spouse, she wants a sugar daddy who will treat her and her friends.”

“This sounds like some kind of power move that backfired spectacularly,” another person wrote.

"Clear attempt at manipulation"

Another person pointed out the potential double standards in the incident.

“If you brought four friends to your house and said, without telling her, my wife will be cooking dinner tonight because women should stay in the kitchen, I know that she’d freak out and scream at you,” they wrote.

“The ‘man pays’ thing was a clear attempt at manipulation. ‘If you don’t pay, you’re not really a man. So either pay or feel humiliated’.”

“I wouldn’t expect a man to pay for me on a date, so I definitely wouldn’t expect them to pay in a group,” another person wrote.

“Everyone should just pay for what they ordered. It’s way fairer that way, especially when some people don’t drink and others order 3+ cocktails/wines.”