I Bought Your Drinks, So You Owe Me Sex – Why Do Some Men Believe Dating Is A Transaction?

Amy, 31, was on a night out when a man approached her and asked to buy her a drink. She told him she had a boyfriend and wasn’t interested – but he bought the drink anyway. As she began to walk away, his friends criticised her for taking the drink and not talking to him for longer as a thank you.

Dr Emma Beckett, from the department of sociology at the University of Warwick, researches gendered capital. What we are seeing here is capitalism and patriarchy perfectly intertwined, she argues. “Boys and men are surrounded by influences that tell them they have to act and behave in certain ways in order to ‘be men’,” she says. “This not only puts men under pressure to act in a certain way, but it also gives many men an excuse to behave in ways they feel entitled to behave in.”

Will, 22, believes men who feel they deserve sex for payment are “shameful” but also acknowledges his own feelings of entitlement. “I’ve been the guy who has met a girl in a bar, got chatting, offered to buy a drink and as soon as they have a cocktail in their hand, they’ve danced off onto the dance floor to never be seen again,” he notes. “[I] Felt like a fool for a few minutes before I got over it.”

So while many men resent feeling like they have to pay, Beckett argues that some also choose to do so as a tool to exercise power and control over women. “Many men feel they have in effect, invested in that woman and therefore she should repay him in some way – usually with positive attention.”

It can also be hard for women to not buy into that narrative. I talk to Lynn, 57, who says she stopped dating because she felt so obliged to have sex with people who were picking up the tab, and it was eroding her self-worth.

A 2010 study ‘You Owe Me’ sought respondents’ views on a fictional date rape scenario. Male respondents believed that when a man had paid 100% for an expensive date, both characters (male and female) should have expected sexual intercourse. But when the costs of an inexpensive date were split, the perpetrator was assigned the most blame for the rape and no sexual expectations were warranted.  

Even as society changes and dating appears transformed, Beckett argues that we are still likely to come up against the belief that an exchange of money entitles men to goods. “It all comes down to the man feeling entitled to exercise power and control over women, having ‘paid’ for this interaction. This often leads to a backlash if the woman does not ‘repay’ him with the positive attention he is expecting,” she says.

So while more people are choosing to split the costs of a date, there is still some way to go. As Kayleigh says: “I’d rather pay my own way and not feel like I owe anything to a stranger.”