{"id":68201,"date":"2025-07-16T09:40:04","date_gmt":"2025-07-16T09:40:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pulsperry.com\/?p=68201"},"modified":"2025-07-16T09:40:04","modified_gmt":"2025-07-16T09:40:04","slug":"he-insisted-on-paying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pulsperry.com\/?p=68201","title":{"rendered":"He Insisted on Paying"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When Eric showed up to our first date with roses and a monogrammed gift, I thought I\u2019d hit the jackpot. He was charming, thoughtful, and the perfect gentleman \u2014 even insisting on paying the bill with a firm, \u201cA man pays on the first date.\u201d I figured, why argue?The next morning, I woke up to a text from him. I expected a sweet message. Instead, I got an invoice. Yes \u2014 an actual, itemized invoice titled\u00a0<strong>\u201cDate Night \u2013 Amount Due.\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0It included charges like:<\/p>\n<div class=\"code-block code-block-2\">\n<div data-type=\"_mgwidget\" data-widget-id=\"1605502\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><em>Bouquet of Roses:<\/em>\u00a01 hug,\u00a0<em>Custom Gift:<\/em>\u00a01 coffee date,\u00a0<em>Dinner &amp; Tip:<\/em>\u00a0A guaranteed second date,\u00a0<em>Polite Conversation:<\/em>\u00a0\/A compliment about his looks, At the bottom, it read:<strong>\u00a0\u201cFailure to comply may result in collection \u2014 via Chris.\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0(Chris being our mutual friend and the poor guy who vouched for him.) I was stunned. So was Mia, my best friend, who\u2019d set us up. She showed the invoice to Chris, who was horrified \u2014 and inspired.<\/p>\n<p>Within an hour, Chris sent Eric a\u00a0<strong>revenge invoice<\/strong>, charging him for things like:\u00a0<em>Sitting at the Same Table as Her:<\/em>\u00a0Public apology,\u00a0<em>Pretending to Be a Gentleman:<\/em>\u00a0Introspection,\u00a0<em>Not Posting This Online:<\/em>\u00a0A generous gift he should be grateful for,<\/p>\n<div class=\"code-block code-block-2\">\n<div data-type=\"_mgwidget\" data-widget-id=\"1605502\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Eric blew up my phone with defensive texts, claiming I \u201cmissed out on a great guy.\u201d I replied with a single thumbs-up emoji\u2026 and blocked him. Lesson learned: if a guy insists on paying the bill, make sure he doesn\u2019t expect a romantic payment plan in return. (And yes \u2014 I kept the keychain. It\u2019s now a trophy from the weirdest date of my life.)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/pulsperry.com\/?p=68182\">also read&#8230;.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When Eric showed up to our first date with roses and a monogrammed gift, I thought I\u2019d hit the jackpot. He was charming, thoughtful, and the perfect&#8230; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":68202,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pulsperry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68201"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pulsperry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pulsperry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pulsperry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pulsperry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=68201"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pulsperry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68203,"href":"https:\/\/pulsperry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68201\/revisions\/68203"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pulsperry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/68202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pulsperry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=68201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pulsperry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=68201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pulsperry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=68201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}