Dear Answer Girl,
What are the current rules of etiquette pertaining to dating? You know, like opening doors and paying and stuff. I read a book of etiquette and it just talked about table manners and such.
-Ed E. QuetteWell, there may be a reason for that.
What do you think, ladies? Would you rather go on a date with someone who opens your door and pays but eats like a pig at a trough, or someone that expects you to get your own door and your own food, but is a real pleasure to eat with?
Well, OK, some people will do anything for a free meal, including accepting dates from disgusting individuals, but let’s give most ladies the benefit of the doubt.
When it really comes down to it, whether you open the door or split the check completely pales in comparison to your experience at the dinner table.
And table manners don’t just stop at which knife and fork to use, you know. Nope, conversational skills are also included (and are really more important).
For instance, good table manners stipulate that you refrain from saying anything that makes your dining partner uncomfortable, including a detailed description of something rotting with maggots, the highly colorful exclamation that your date’s food looks like barf, an excessive use of profanity, or even probing and inappropriate questions, to name just a few.
Of course, good table manners also require that you avoid using your fingers to eat non-finger foods, like steak, mashed potatoes, rice, a grilled chicken breast, glazed carrots, key lime pie and many, many more.
But are these rules really anything new? No matter how lax you are in the privacy of your own kitchen/dorm room/closet/place where you do most of your eating, you can’t make me believe that you are unaware of these basic rules of dinner decorum.
This is probably because they are pretty important on the scale of useful etiquette codes. But, as your question suggests, the rules about whether to open doors and whether to pay are much cloudier because they fall so easily under the category of Political Opinions.
Many women would be delighted if you opened the door for them. Most would be offended if you practically knocked them down as you charged inside a building first, leaving the door to hit them on the way back.
But there is a lot of gray area between these scenarios. After all, the modern purpose of door holding is really to make sure that no one gets hit by the door or is otherwise unable to open it on his/her own. That’s why we should always open and hold doors for people pushing strollers or carrying heavy parcels.
Some women take this a step further and conclude that if men hold doors for them, it is a clear indication that men believe that they are unable to open them without assistance.
Quite a tricky scenario. Just about as tricky, in fact, as the “to pay or not to pay” situation, which involves similar assumptions by some women.
So what is the answer? I say open the door if you are in a natural position to do so. Don’t sprint in front or otherwise obviously maneuver in order to grab the handle first, but if you are in front, please don’t just bust in without the least care for the person behind you.
If you do enter first, you could do the “moving door-hold,” where you more or less keep the door in a fully open position as you enter, allowing the person behind you to maintain its openness as he/she follows you in.
Car doors? Um, don’t get that started unless you want to keep it up for the rest of the foreseeable future. If you hold off for a bit, you can get by with doing it only on occasion, which is much better since the automatic door unlocker removes the necessity of you unlocking and opening your passenger’s door first to be sure of him/her entering the car before you.
Dinner? I say if you invited the girl, expect to pay. If she offers to pay half, let her if you want to. If you don’t, then say “nah, it’s cool.” If she insists, then let her. There’s no need for a big scene.
If she invites you, I think you should still be prepared to pay just because our society is still sort of weird sometimes, but don’t put up a fight if/when she offers unless you really don’t want her to pay for some reason.
But most important of all, brush up on those table manners. No one cares about open doors and paid checks when the company is boring, disgusting or otherwise unbearable.

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