He had taken his final bite of dessert. We had only been dating for three weeks, but this was it, the perfect moment to ask the most important question of our relationship.
I reached across the table, clasped his hand, looked into his eyes and said, “Will you open a joint bank account with me?”
He laughed, a surprised bark that made the couple at the next table glance over. I felt my pulse in my throat as I waited for him to realize I wasn’t joking.
His laugh faded when he saw my expression. I watched his face change, the amusement draining away while his hand went still under mine. The clink of silverware, murmur of conversations and gentle music playing overhead all seemed to pause, awaiting his response.
“You’re serious,” he said, not quite a question.
I nodded, mouth dry. This wasn’t how I had imagined this conversation going. In my head, he would have been charmed by my directness, maybe even impressed by my practicality. Instead, he looked like I had just asked him for his kidney.
When the waiter approached with the check, I felt my chest tighten. Here it was again, the moment that had been haunting me for years.
While other people agonize over first intimacies or defining their relationship, my dating anxiety had always centered on: Who is going to pay?
This anxiety started when I insisted on paying for everything. Comedy shows, IMAX tickets, three-course dinners — all me. I would slap away any hand that dared reach for the bill, putting on a big show about how honored I was to pay.
My friends couldn’t believe I was letting all these guys off the financial hook, but they didn’t understand. In my Chinese American family, paying for dinner is considered an honor, and my parents, aunts and uncles would threaten bodily harm to win that privilege.
The family ritual always began when someone whispered “mǎi dān” (check, please) to the waiter. Despite the subtlety, every adult would perk up like animals sensing an earthquake, turning dinner’s end into a battle royale.
“Let go of the bill!”
“I’ll kill you if you pay again!”
“Give it to me or I’ll name your grandson after that accountant who ruined your taxes!”
The chaos that followed was spectacular, chairs scraping as people lunged across tables, chopsticks clattering to plates abandoned mid-bite. Someone’s sleeve would inevitably drag through the black bean sauce as they made a desperate grab for the check presenter.
I used to love this spectacle, taking bets with my cousins on who would emerge victorious. My uncle had fast hands and the advantage of sitting closest to the aisle, but my aunt was cunning; she would intercept the waiter before he even reached our table, slipping him her credit card while pretending to ask about the dessert menu.
One evening, after my aunt “won,” my parents sent me crawling under the table to slip money into her purse. I was proud of their clever reverse pickpocketing scheme, a way for them to save face after losing the bill.
But on the drive home, I overheard my parents brainstorming other ways to pay my aunt back through groceries and clothes for her children. When I asked why, they explained that my aunt had just lost her job and couldn’t really afford that dinner. Everyone had let her “win” the bill to allow her to save face. I had it completely backward.
Suddenly, I saw the elaborate system behind the chaos. When my parents “won” because I had overeaten the honey walnut prawns, or when my cousin was allowed to pay because her Apple stock had recently soared, it all made sense. Behind the theatrical bill wrestling was a tradition of care, ensuring everyone was looked after according to their circumstances.
But when we were at an In-N-Out and my uncle snatched my father’s credit card, and then my mother threatened to “murder” his mother if he didn’t return it, I was mortified. The teenagers in line behind us gawked and snickered. Other patrons stood frozen, clutching their red plastic trays like shields. The cashier looked concerned. Her voice cut through the chaos: “They’re just burgers,” she said.
Under the fluorescent lights and amid the smell of fryer oil, my family’s sacred ritual suddenly looked like an embarrassing spectacle. I retreated to a corner, my face burning as I tried to make myself invisible, wishing I could disown these “weird Chinese people.”
Years later, watching my family fight to pay had seared into my subconscious a compulsive need to pay for all my dinner dates. While I didn’t expect anyone outside my family to understand our tradition, I couldn’t help feeling resentful when my dates never fought back. Especially when I was laid off. I felt like no one was looking out for me the way my family had looked out for my aunt.
It was bewildering. Surely my dates understood that I couldn’t keep footing the bill. They made more money than I did! Did they notice when I started suggesting Chipotle? One guy let me pay every bill for three months, no doubt patting himself on the back for enabling female empowerment.
Did I have the kind of swagger that implied I was subsidizing our meals from a trust fund? It was infuriating to date in a culture where no one talked about money, yet there I was date after date having 20-minute conversations about the weather instead of discussing financial empathy in relationships.
I tried embracing common American dating tactics: letting him pay (“he owes me!”), taking turns (expensive dinner on him, coffee on me), going Dutch (everyone for themselves!). But it all felt like trying to love an itchy sweater. I wanted what my family had, the instinct to notice and care for each other.
Then I met Aodhán. As I sat across from him with the light streaming through the restaurant windows, I had an idea. What if there was a way to adapt my family’s tradition for dating? When he finished his dessert, I asked him to open a joint account. It would let either of us make the honorable gesture of fighting for the bill while ensuring we were both systematically cared for behind-the-scenes, no matter who “won.”
But Aodhán sat there aghast. We had only just learned to pronounce each other’s names. He folded his arms and pushed back in his chair. “I haven’t had a joint bank account since I was 10,” he said in his Irish accent, “with my mam.”
I again felt like that ashamed teenager at In-N-Out. I stared out the window, gathering the words to defend my proposal. When I turned back to him, what came out instead was: “It rained a lot this spring.”
We spent the next 20 minutes talking about the weather.
I expected him to ghost me. To my surprise, he arranged our next date at Citibank, where we sat across from a banker who kept glancing between us with barely concealed confusion.
“You’ve been together how long?” he asked, pen poised over the paperwork.
“Three weeks,” I said. Aodhán shifted in his chair.
The banker blinked. “And you want to open a joint checking account.”
“Gold checking,” I said. “With both our names on the debit cards.”
The process took 45 minutes. The banker walked us through overdraft protection, minimum balances and monthly fees with the enthusiasm of someone reading a phone book. Aodhán answered questions about his employment status and visa documentation while I filled out forms, both of us maintaining the pretense that this was perfectly normal fourth-date behavior.
When the banker handed us our temporary debit cards, I felt something I hadn’t felt in years of dating: relief. Not love, not butterflies, just the simple comfort of knowing someone understood what mattered to me, even if he didn’t intuitively understand why.
Aodhán revealed he had his own reasons for embracing my proposal. As a foreigner in America for less than a year, he had struggled to establish credit. The joint account would help him build the financial foundation he needed.
He didn’t understand my family’s traditions; how could he? Yet somehow, in our mismatched needs, we had stumbled onto something that worked. I needed a way to practice the care and reciprocity I’d grown up with, and he needed to build a life in a new country.
This became our template as we continued dating. We didn’t need to fully understand each other’s backgrounds, but we found ways to honor what was important to each of us — two people from different worlds learning to make romance work on our own terms.
Nine years later, we’re married with several joint accounts, including a college fund for our 4-year-old. He’s almost at the perfect under-the-table crawling height for some reverse pickpocketing. My aunts and uncles will never see him coming.
Janene Lin is a TV writer in Los Angeles.
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