What To Do On A First Date.Or Not Do

According to Rose and Frieze, a first date, or any
date that follows, the man is typically and
traditionally portrayed as initiating the date,
planning the date activities, picking the girl up,
driving, paying for the date, performing courteous
acts for the date--such as opening doors and possibly
making any affectionate moves and then returning the
date home. The woman's role tends to be more of a
passive one. She is expected to wait for the man to
initiate and determine whether or not to "accept or
reject [a] date's moves." As Esther Vilar notes
in The Manipulated Man (1971), these traditional
roles seem to be constructed to cater to one sex's
needs, while the needs of the other go ignored.
According to her research, it would appear that
women try and condition men to conform to a set of
rules that caters exclusively to their needs, and
reward men with praise (i.e. "you're such a
gentleman," "it's so nice to meet a man who knows
how to treat a woman," "I guess chivalry isn't
dead," "you're so well-mannered") when men comply
with these set of rules, while scolding and
vilifying them if they don't. In The Polygamous
Sex (1976), a more formal analysis shows that
following traditional courtship and dating rules in
modern times is highly biased and tends to disfavor
men.