I was met with his scowl after opening the door for myself. Despite walking faster than my date around Faneuil Hall, he was angry that I did not allow him to be a gentleman. Laughing a little because his anger felt unreal, I pulled the next door knob for myself, not expecting him to actually be upset. 

Yet the scowl intensified. “That’s my job,” he said. I nervously walked behind him to avoid upsetting him again, turning what was supposed to be a kind gesture into an uncomfortable experience. 

On an Italian dinner date with a different man, he overheard a couple deciding to split the bill and motioned for me to pull out my phone. Feeling confused as to why he wanted me to do this, he messaged me that a man should kill himself for splitting the bill with a woman. 

I found this ironic — until my date passionately insulted the man as we walked back to his car. Despite his intense dedication to paying for a woman’s meal, he had no problem calling me “gordita” — a Spanish word for fattie — when I happily ate my pasta in front of him. 

Determining a man’s dateability by whether or not he opens a door or throws his credit card on the restaurant table is frivolous. Yet, women are still taught to decide a man’s worth by these traits. 

A multitude of influencers target young women with relationship advice framing chivalry as the highest virtue from men in dating. Fiona Leona, an influencer with more than 122,000 followers on TikTok, tells viewers a man must pay for a woman’s car ride on a date and take her to a nice restaurant by the second date or else he is “broke.” Another influencer with 275,000 followers, Germany Limehouse, advises women to avoid asking a man out and to reject him if he does not bring a present to the first date.

Instead of teaching women to search for traits that actually indicate compatibility, such as open communication, money is made to be the ultimate marker of a “high-value man.” It’s not the size of his heart, ladies, but the size of his wallet!

As I have discovered with my bad dates, men are also socially conditioned to adhere to these standards. Late conservative activist Charlie Kirk asked, “What kind of a wuss beta male is splitting the check?” on an episode of The Iced Coffee Hour podcast last year. “That money you save is not worth the honor that you compromise,” he continued. 

Is honor actually being compromised though? 

A recent research study on men’s perceptions of the online tradwife movement, a movement encouraging women to become stay-at-home wives and serve their husbands, found that men whose beliefs aligned with “benevolent sexism” also portrayed the most hostile sexism.

In other words, men who feel they need to be gentlemen and provide for women are also inclined to be blatantly sexist toward their partners. But our culture still constantly reinforces that a chivalrous man is the best man to date when it isn’t true.

Not only does this hurt women, but it also puts a high amount of pressure on men — who already feel their value is determined by how many women they can sleep with. A Psychology Today article reports that the media still frames a high sex drive as a positive masculine trait, influencing men to believe they always have to chase sex, even if they aren’t actually interested. Combined with men being viewed as romantically worse for not performing chivalry, it makes sense as to why these patriarchal structures remain in dating. 

It’s a lose-lose situation: Either men are judged positively for complying with benevolent gender stereotypes — despite the inherent sexism of needing to “take care of women” — or they repel women by not complying with these misogynistic expectations.

Still, it’s important to note that men don’t always engage in these behaviors out of sheer sexism; paying for the date or pulling a woman’s chair out for her is sometimes just a courteous gesture.

But courtesy without true respect means nothing in building a healthy relationship. Once I realized this, I offered to split and even pay entirely for the men I went on dates with to see how they would react. 

Notably, the first man I did this for never forced me to walk behind him or called me fat for enjoying food. He told me how intelligent I was and always wanted to hear what I had to say.