Long story short, I paid for our first dinner, and he paid for our second, I went to the bathroom and when I came back, he had already paid. I said, “I can pay you half or I can get the next one.” And he replied, “Since you’ll be gone for three weeks I’ll need you to split the check and Venmo me for half.” I was taken aback because I felt like he either wasn’t interested in me, extremely cheap or felt like I wasn’t worth investing in. Splitting the check is weird to me, plus it was $18 and at that point I would have honestly rather paid the whole bill since I hate splitting, it’s so awkward. How do I tell him that this bothers me? –Sincerely, Splitting the check

Reading the query reminded me of the advice my mother instilled in me back in high school, and that was always keep an emergency twenty-dollar bill in your wallet.   She would often say, “That $20 bill will get you out of more jams than you can imagine!” and over the years it has.  Though I digress if I were this woman, I would have slapped my emergency $20 on the table and walked out. There are already clearly red flags that should make her not want to get entangled in such a relationship.  I would also suggest to her to get comfortable in splitting the bill. After all, some individuals are on a budget, and others simply cannot recall who paid last time.  What I would not do is advise her to follow Resto advice or so called her script. Which reads as follows “Hey (insert name), I’ve been enjoying our time together and want to continue to go out and get to know you more. However, I want to be honest and tell you that it really bothered me when you insist, we split the check because I was going to be out of town. It made me feel like you weren’t interested or didn’t want to invest in this relationship because you weren’t getting something out of it immediately. I like the cadence of paying every other time and knowing that in the end, it evens out. What are your feelings?”- What would you do?