He paid for the first date. When she didn’t want a second, he asked for his money back

Samantha Costanza went on a first date with a man she’d met on a dating app in January 2022.

They got to know each other as they both sipped on hot cider because of the cold at the Brooklyn, New York, bar where they’d agreed to meet. When it was time to pay for the drinks, Costanza’s date handed his credit card to the bartender.

A few days later, he messaged that he’d like to see her again. Costanza didn’t feel the same.

“I spent over an hour crafting a very polite reply that assured him I had a lovely time but just did not see a future connection,” said Costanza, 29, a customer operations analyst.

In response, the man asked Costanza if she could Venmo him back payment for her drinks.

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“I was in complete shock,” she said. “It made it seem like the only reason he would offer to pay for my drinks was that he expected something from me.”

Relationship and etiquette experts say the confluence of changing gender norms, popularity of payment apps and the economic climate tightening people’s budgets is making the already fraught first date a little more tense.

One symptom may be more awkwardness around how the tab is handled, in the moment and after the fact. Like Costanza, some women say they’ve had a male date ask for his money back after they explained they didn’t want to go out again.

“We are culturally moving into a dating environment that we’re all unfamiliar in,” said New York-based psychotherapist Carli Blau.

The requests for money back after a disappointing date are a symptom of a much bigger problem with modern dating, said Jon Birger, author of “Date-onomics: How Dating Became a Lopsided Numbers Game.”

These situations would be much less likely to occur on a first date involving two people set up by a mutual friend or a…