Last time we talked about digital dystopian challenges. Today, let’s talk about economic obstacles to establishing and maintaining positive relationships – wartime edition!
I know, we’re all pretending it’s not happening, but it’s happening.
And that’s the problem!
Cost of living vs. cost of dating
I was speaking to a young man this morning and mentioned this episode series. Asked if he felt any additional pressures in dating these days as a member of his gender, he reported yes. The costs of existing and dating.
You can’t walk out the door without spending $50 these days as a single person. So, I decided to look into it and found more than expected.
BMO Real Financial Progress Index
New survey data shows Americans spend $189 on an average date, a 12.5% increase from 2025
Americans spent an average of more than $2,300 on dates in the past year
As dating expenses climb, Americans say they are changing their behavior. Half say they have gone on fewer dates or chosen less expensive activities due to rising costs. On average, Americans who dated went out about 12 times in the past year, down from around 14 in 2025.
For singles: According to the survey, cost pressures are taking a toll: nearly half (47%) of singles say dating is simply not financially worth it.
Regardless of relationship status, rising dating costs present a challenge for young Americans trying to make real financial progress. 50% of Gen Z and 40% of Millennials say the cost of dating gets in the way of reaching their financial goals.
Gen Z and Millennials also report the largest increase in date night spending:
- Millennials: $252 on average, up 32% from 2025
- Gen Z: $205 on average, up from $194 in 2025
The data reveal two distinct approaches to coping with higher dating costs: some Americans are cutting back by choosing low‑ or no‑cost dates such as having a picnic or going on a hike, while others are accepting that dating is expensive and continuing to spend.
14% of Americans say the average date costs them nothing, up from 12% a year ago. At the other end of the spectrum, 14% say a typical date costs $300 or more, up from 11% in 2025.
Which seems exorbitant.
Let’s look for middle ground.
A “cheap” estimate per my experience and general consensus: $60-100 for dinner and drinks. If you’re going on one date a week, we’re talking $240-400. When we roll any ectra activities in, it climbs rapidly from there. Even a few coffees ($10-20 these days), lunch dates ($30-50), or costs to hang at each other’s’ places (fuel, $10-20; groceries $30-60) are going to add up quickly on top of that figure.
So realistically, playing it “cheap,” we can still say somewhat conservatively… we’re talking maybe $500 a month to date for the first few months.
Which might go nowhere.
And the investment may need to start all over again with another match.
Meanwhile:
Why affordability will be a key issue in the 2026 midterm elections
March 25, 2026. A very recent article.
Let’s run through some of the costs of simply being alive in spring 2026.
He says:
Health care
Between 1999 and 2024, health care rose from 13% to 18% as a share of GDP, an increase that has serious consequences for family budgets. While wages rose by 119% during this period, workers’ contributions to family health care insurance premiums surged by 308%, almost three times the pace of wages.
Against this backdrop, it is not surprising that health care has risen to the top of Americans’ concerns about affordability. A recent survey found that 32% of respondents were “very worried” about health care costs, compared to 24% for food and groceries, 23% for rent or mortgage payments, 22% for utilities, and 17% for gas and other transportation.
Housing
Since early 2020, the cost of median-priced housing has risen by 28%, from $317,000 to $405,000, while mortgage interest rates surged from 3.45% to 6.11%.
These increases have disrupted the long-established balance between housing prices and household incomes. Until 2020, a median-income household could afford mortgages to buy median-priced homes. Now, households need incomes of $120,000 to qualify for such mortgages, but the median income stands at only $85,000.
For decades, the median age for first home purchases moved in a narrow range between 29 and 31 years—about when young adults were getting married and starting families. Today, the median age for first home purchases stands at 40 years.
Renting estimate:
As of early 2026, the national median rent for a one-bedroom apartment in the U.S. is approximately $1,500 to $1,550 per month
Realtor.com and ApartmentAdvisor
Groceries
Overall grocery prices have risen by 31% since February 2020, and for some high-profile items—ground beef, for example—the increase has been much steeper.
Estimate: $518.67
Utilities
Household utility costs have risen by 41% in the five years after the beginning of the pandemic. Electricity is up 32%, water 43%, and natural gas 60%, and 17% of households have fallen behind on their monthly electricity bills.
Estimate: In early 2026, the average American household spends approximately $611 per month on total utilities (electricity, gas, water, sewer, internet, and streaming).
- Electricity: $138–$169/month (18–19 cents/kWh) [1, 5, FRED]
- Natural Gas: $85/month
- Water: $43–$49/month [1, Lawn Love]
- Sewer: $67/month
- Internet: $77/month
- Streaming Services: $67/month
Automobiles
Since the onset of the pandemic, the average price of a new car has risen from $38,000 to $50,000, an increase of 32%. Hard-pressed consumers who turned to used cars found little respite; used cars rose by 28% during this period. Meanwhile, auto insurance premiums have risen by a stunning 55% since the pandemic began.
And let’s say you’re a single parent:
Child care
Between 2020 and 2024, the average cost of child care rose by 29%, 7 points more than the overall inflation of 22% during these years. Starting in mid-2024, the pace of child care inflation accelerated to twice the rate of overall inflation, a trend that persisted through 2025.
Estimate: 332–$343 per week, or around $15,000–$17,800+ annually per child
I’m guessing that figure is not including a babysitter for these $200 dates, either. Add another hundo onto the pile for each one.
So, comparing these numbers vs the average cost of a date of $189, you can pay for:
- Two dates or a week of childcare.
- Two and a half dates or one month of food.
- One date or one month of electricity.
And if we compare these numbers against the “relatively cheap” estimate of $500 a month, we’re talking:
- One month of dating or one car payment.
- One month of dating or one month of eating.
- One month of dating or 30% of rented roof over head.
The potential for wasting money on dating that is required for an individual’s living is quite high. Making it actually inaccessible to a good portion of the population at this time.
Because no matter how hard you hustle, there are limitations. Socioeconomic, energetic, attentional. If it takes an extra 25-50 hours to afford a month of dating… when will the dating take place? With what brain cells?
At least when I was working and dating around minimum wage, the dollar menu existed. Even McDs is going to be a $15-20 date. These days you couldn’t even grab fast food without an opportunity cost financially and ultimately temporally.
So, is it any wonder we’re not going on dates? Or that a common complaint in the dating experience is “they won’t just make a plan, they won’t take this off the app.”
It’s not so flippant to schedule a potentially one-off date when even the “cheap” (in quotes) plan could feed you for a week.
And yet, we still have human needs.
To deprive ourselves of love or connection isn’t a possibility, either.
Trust. I’ve tried.
Dates for debt
This fact helps explain this data from a podcast episode: The Cost of Loving: New research finds that financial pressures are causing a huge strain on relationships.
If you’ve been thinking “how the fuck do people afford $300 dates” – answer might be…
They don’t! But they pay for it like a living expense anyways.
- The average debt from dating and relationships amongst 18-35 year olds is £2246.50 ($2574.38)
- 5% of young men have gotten themselves into over £10,000 of debt from dating/relationships ($11459.50)
So, firstly, if you’ve interpreted these stats the way I have, they’re not saying that on average men spend $2500 on dating. They’re saying men exceed the amount of money they have by $2500. And five percent overspend by $12000. Which says nothing about the total amount they’ve paid, only the deficit they’ve created.
That’s horrifying!
Despite the inability to support a dating lifestyle, some are still doing it, to their own financial destruction. One would assume, because they have unmet needs that outweigh financially stringent behaviors. Going into debt to try to find or keep a love interest has become a societal concern.
And as long as this series centralizes on technology vs. the human race, let’s consider how this date overspend problem could be caused by unrealistic online worlds:
The social media influence behind bankrupting dates
- 59% of young people say social media has contributed to expectations to overspend on their partner
- 63% believe social media has influenced people to date for money and materialistic reasons over love
Despite the shared reality we all live in, the preferred reality of living large, commonly popularized on the net, has corrupted our expectations of each other. And also driven us towards less pure motivations in our relationship attempts – so that we’re potentially seeing each other as means to an end rather than emotional individuals on the quest for something immaterial.
And how about this next point, as we recall last episode’s assertion that social media lets us get to know each other too quickly and inaccurately, as we look for red flags.
- 36% of men have browsed a potential date’s social media profile to check if they could afford their lifestyle vs 28% of women
All in all, revealing that 1) some of this debtful dating behavior is due to peer influence or social pressure and 2) a real or fake or incorrectly judged lifestyle on IG might be driving people away from each other as they fear for their bank account or for their social status on earth.
We’re looking at each other to see what’s “normal” or “right” in dating.
And we’re looking at our potential partners to see if they subscribe to the same ideas. Which may make or break the connection. It could lead to a first date or the decision to save the rent money, if it seems like it will be fruitless.
These days, folks may have to choose between living and attempts at honestly loving. And I think we’ll see other priorities shift, as well.
Under times of economic and existential strain, will we choose to partner for appearance or love or money? And what happens if we choose the latter?
Change in priorities (love or money)
According once again to BMO Real Financial Progress Index, 58% of people in serious relationships say they are financially dependent on their significant other, up from the 40% who said the same just a year ago.
And from that same article we just talked about, which was from a podcast: The Cost of Loving: New research finds that financial pressures are causing a huge strain on relationships
They report:
- 1 in 5 (19%) 18-35 year olds end a relationship due to financial issues1
- 1 in 3 couples are only staying together because they fear ‘not being able to afford to live alone’
- Nearly half (47%) of people admit they are unsure how to sever financial ties with a former partner
Based on a survey of 2000 18-35 year olds conducted by 3Gem January 2024
Based on an Opinium survey of 1000 UK adults, between 6th-10th February 2023
We, increasingly, are reliant on each other. A huge step backwards in the “equality for partners” push of the last 30 years.
Of course, when times are hard, we lean on each other more. But this is also increasing our relational codependence and power imbalances that we’ve, societally, been talking about diminishing for at least one generation.
A return to trad living that isn’t necessarily conscious.
When times get tough, we seek resources. We might change what we’re looking for, picking partners for reason we might not even be fully aware of… like the implicit drive to survive or feel safe.
However, once a person is attached to someone else for their capacity to keep them alive – such as through paying for their life - the relationship is no longer a relationship.
Relationships require we can move away from each other and come back together.
If we give that up economically or otherwise, we become one, give up the “relationship” and therefore the ability to end it, by becoming inseparable. That’s not partnership, that’s conjoinment. Like fused twins, connected by bank account rather than skeleton.
So, we as a population, in these dystopian days, might encounter:
- People trying to mooch off us.
- Ourselves, consciously or not, trying to mooch off others. Being subtly influenced towards certain candidates without assessing them accurately or according to enough factors.
- Relationships that transform into dependencies and become unleavable
- Or, simply, shifted expectations and standards that make it even harder to get a match, date, or partner.
Because what happens when we DO get a partner who is, in part, partnered because of finances?
If survival takes precedent and a greater emphasis on financial success – shared resources – becomes the norm… even if it is unconscious rather than statedly driving our dating decisions… What happens to the relationships built on these pillars?
It becomes a part of one’s identity, on the giving and receiving ends. It becomes the determinant of one’s sense of worth.
And everything crumbles from there.
Financially-driven relationship outcomes
For the love of money: The role of financially contingent self-worth in romantic relationships
Deborah E. Ward, Lora E. Park, Courtney M. Walsh, Kristin Naragon-Gainey, Elaine Paravati, and Ashley V. Whillans
.. research on contingencies of self-worth suggests that while the pursuit of self-esteem is motivating, it often interferes with fulfilling basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness (Crocker & Park, 2004). Consistent with this idea, people who base their self-worth on financial success feel less autonomy, which predicts spending less time with loved ones and feeling more alone and disconnected from others (Ward et al., 2020). These individuals also report experiencing greater financial hassles and view financial stressors in a more negative light than those whose self-worth is less tied to money (Park et al., 2017). Because individuals who base their self-worth on money prioritize financial pursuits over relational needs or concerns, they are expected to experience more frequent interpersonal conflicts pertaining to money and to feel less satisfied and supported in their relationships.
In sum, when people base their self-worth on money, the pursuit of self-esteem is likely to take precedence over relational goals and concerns.
So, while money may start as a means to relate, eventually the cash stream becomes more important than the relationship it jumpstarted.
The generation of more funds becomes the focus, as the driver of the relationship, while the partnership, itself – the emotional, supportive, and connective dynamic - is left to rot.
And as one might expect, money doesn’t fix that problem:
For both participants and partners, basing self-worth on financial success was related to perceiving greater financial conflicts and experiencing worse relationship outcomes (i.e., lower relationship satisfaction; less perceived partner support). Additionally, participants’ perceptions of financial conflicts in their relationship were negatively related to partners’ relationship satisfaction. In other words, participants who reported having more financial conflicts in their relationship had partners who reported feeling less satisfied in the relationship.
When we’re not financially secure or perceive that we aren’t, our partners feel less satisfied.
And we’ll perceive that we’re not financially secure if the relationship has caused us to base our self-worth on those funds.
So, if we get together for security, the relationship will seem to be full of problems and each person will be more needs deprived and more stressed out. Even if those problems are imagined. Which they’re more likely to be, when we’ve placed such great importance on finances.
Money becomes the focus. Money is likely to ebb and flow over the course of a lifetime. And the relationship can’t right itself because it’s been put on the backburner, with cash being the determinant of its health or validity. The money is the source of self-esteem, not the relationship.
And how could social or other forms of media play into this?
Participants who read an article touting many (vs. few) benefits of financial success were more likely to expect benefits of being financially successful and to base their current self-esteem in this domain. These participants showed greater conflict-related responses to ambiguous financial scenarios and expected to feel less satisfied and supported by their partner in these scenarios.
Meaning, when we let Instagram or internet streaming or even personal associates inform us about how relationships and resources are “supposed” to interplay, we’re doomed to have dissatisfying relationships.
Overall, these findings are consistent with the previous studies showing that Financial CSW is related to greater reported financial conflicts and worse relationship outcomes. These findings emerged even after controlling for participants’ tendency to respond negatively to conflicts with partners in general.
..Whereas previous work focused on economic strain as a key predictor of financial conflict, the current research found that basing self-worth on money was uniquely related to experiencing more financial conflicts with one’s partner and worse relationship outcomes.
Our financial relationship stress is not due to actual figures. It’s due to expectations and the importance we’ve placed on resources, together, and through external influences.
In addition, the current work reveals that basing self-worth on money is indirectly related to negative outcomes in romantic relationships, above and beyond income, economic strain, or materialism.
Because self-worth based on money is no longer about material reality. Finances become measures of personal validity, instead of purchasing power. Which is immaterial, head-bound, and subject to personal perceptions which have been subconsciously informed by bountiful toxic messages and expectations, increasingly, in the years that the internet has been bending public opinion back towards relationship disempowerment dynamics.
Financial codependence is, in most situations, just as unhealthy and psychologically corrupting for the providers as for the beneficiaries.
It becomes an ego maker or breaker for the provider, as well as the receiver.
And neither party seems to be capable of satisfaction, unless, of course, everything goes their ways and nothing can ever be perceived as a financial conflict.
Unlikely, for most.
Meaning these survival-based relationships actually serve no one.
Well.. unless you’ve wound up with a predator.
Let’s dip into the depressing information about where this is all going, briefly.
Financial entrapment and abuse
As we keep saying, switch genders around as necessary.
Financial Freedom: Women, Money, and Domestic Abuse
Dana Harrington Conner
Inadequate material resources render women more vulnerable to violence. Inadequate material resources increase the batterers’ access to women who do try to separate. Inadequate material resources are a primary reason why women do not try to separate . . . [T]hose women who are economically vulnerable have an increased vulnerability to violence.
Batterers often use the political and economic vulnerability of women to reinforce their power and dominance over particular women . . . . Batterers also take advantage of the vulnerabilities of their victims, such as the victim’s economic dependence on the batterer or on the state, her status as an illegal immigrant, her alcohol or drug dependency, or her responsibility to provide and care for children.
In domestic captivity, physical barriers to escape are rare. In most homes, even the most oppressive, there are no bars on the windows, no barbed wire fences. Women and children are not ordinarily chained, though even this occurs more often than one might think. The barriers to escape are generally invisible. They are nonetheless extremely powerful.
That’s enough. We get it.
The only thing I want to add?
Financially-based relationships can be abusive for the providers, too. No one wants to feel used. No one wants to experience increased relational conflict if they aren’t perceived to be providing enough. That’s control and coercion, also.
Money-determined relationships; they miss the human mark – the connection-driven reasons for relating – entirely, and everyone has a worse life for them.
Now let’s start:
Pulling it together.
If (let’s be reductionist and sexist here for the sake of illustration), men are worried about being able to demonstrate their financial success and ability to provide in the modern day, due, in part, to wartime environment, K shaped economic disparity, and influencer lifestyle expectations…
So that, despite the rising cost of everything, they feel the need to do things like overcome the built-for-billionaires job market, drop $200 on dates, and cultivate social media profiles that evidence their financial prowess…
All to establish a relationship. Step one.
Then they might expect or be expected to provide for everyone, or otherwise establish a mutual financial dependence, as 58% of couples currently do…
So that the result? After all that overextension? After perhaps taking on dating debt? After the financial trial and tribulation?
Will be more trial and tribulation. Of an emotional sort, at a minimum.
Because relationships established on bolstering or maintaining a positive sense of self via financial stability have worse outcomes with lower relationship satisfaction and more perceived conflict, even if that measure is inaccurate.
And then… they’re stuck.
About 50% of people (47%) feel as though they can’t leave a relationship because they are so economically enmeshed. Even if the partnership isn’t satisfying or healthy or providing respite from the dramas of the world anymore.
One figure estimates that 25% of people stay in bad relationships for this reason.
Something we’ve all been warned to avoid, in these past 30 years of the world moving towards the now-seemingly-outdated ideal of equal, autonomous, not-societal-abuse-reflective, partnerships.
Making it seem to me, on a most boiled down, black and white, figures-based level, that the options are:
- Overspend on short-term dates and overextend on long-term promises, creating a stressful and conflictual situation that no one feels self-affirmed by.
- Disengage from romance and avoid the whole trap of potential personal imprisonment.
Each option, dissatisfying. Emotionally and otherwise isolative. And potentially leaving a population without other bastions of self-worth, if financial self-worth is what they’ve been raised to anticipate to provide to earn one.
All of which helps to explain the 63% of men under 30 who’ve dipped out of the dating and relationship pool. Also, the male loneliness epidemic. And the male gender collapse, in which they seem to be “laying down” as a form of life protest. Plus, to mention it again, the difficulty in getting an invite to a first date if you’re focused on men.
I do, sincerely, feel for them. If that’s not clear.
And it doesn’t stop there. Of course, it’s not only “men” who fit into this. That’s just the heteronormative research we have to work with and the easiest scenario to discuss. These problems are going to persist in all manner of relationship. I feel for all of them, too.
And, from the other end - from my experience as a woman who doesn’t expect to pay for dates or support someone financially, I’ve noticed my mindset circling around the same options:
- Get into a relationship that’s largely colored by survival and then filled in with old shitty tones.
Or
- For years I’ve estimated it was best to stay alone and survive that way. Keeping my stress and misery and expectations to myself.
Ladies and gents who just can’t find a guy or gal who seems genuinely interested… consider it nothing more than a sign of the times, filtered through traditional expectations and psychological survival drives. Attempts at NOT being in another imbalanced, abusive, relationship due to the environment we’re living in. It’s not a sign of personal fault or shortcoming.
Ladies and gents who’ve put themselves in a dangerous financial position for love… also take some shame or guilt or regret off your shoulders. You were doing what you were taught was necessary. What the socials and the social scene informed everyone was necessary. And you were trying to keep up with expectations.
Because we can’t exist alone, on islands, no matter how expensive it is back on the mainland. Opting out of relationship isn’t a solution. It’s only spitting in the face of biology, psychology, and mammality.
We need human, body and emotional, contact.
But faking who we are and what we can provide in order to get it ALSO isn’t a solution. Leaning into providership and power dynamics will satisfy none and ensnare many, during a period when we already have chronically low life satisfaction and high sense of oppression.
So, fuckers.
What IS the solution?
I mean, eating the billionaires and the economy re-righting itself. But short of that:
Reasonable expectations.
We need to see this misery chain clearly.
The internet is lying about what’s normal.
We can’t expect each other to provide upper class experiences during lower class wages.
And even if we are making good money… to put it in non-academic phrasing, “is it worth blowing on this bitch?” Rather than, say, helping people or animals who legitimately cannot eat?
If we establish relationships based on these financial facades or luxury experiences… then the relationship tends to be based on financial providership or some degree of expectation.
Which will make the relationship costly in terms of life satisfaction, autonomy, freedom of choice, self-esteem, emotional connection, and the experience of “love” that supposedly kickstarted the whole mess.
So, it’s all a waste. A counterproductive measure. A means of perpetual suffering and striving.
Instead let’s get our minds back on the ground.
For dates: no, they don’t need to cost $200. Or even my “cheap” estimate of $60-80. And definitely not for early dates.
A guy – actually, the young guy who spawned this post - recently suggested too fancy a place for a first date. I told him, “let’s find out if we hate each other first.” Instead of the $50 plates he suggested, we grabbed two beers, made sure we liked talking at the brewery, and moved on to a taqueria where the bill was $30. A much better option than getting stuck in a horrible dinner that bankrupts everyone.
Don’t go over the top. It’s too much pressure for everyone right out the gate, on top of every potential negative relationship outcome we discussed here.
For lifestyle reasonable expectations: hey, we all know Instagram is fake and only the lives of the upper, upper class are presented somewhat truthfully. Let’s not expect that’s our reality when we know it isn’t. Let’s be honest that many of us are a few steps away from living in boxes down the alleyway.
No, we don’t have money to throw at each other. And if we do… we might be better people if we decide to donate it, instead of this lavish wasting, when a lot of people can’t eat at all right now. How about you make THAT the focus of your relationship, if it has to be financially or clout based.
For reasonable partner expectations: ya know, let’s watch our gold pot thoughts. Meeting a person isn’t going to make your life that of Kim K. Nor is it going to make you suddenly able to provide the life of Kim K to someone else. If you’ve never lived in a mansion before, consider that’s a good predictor for the future. If you’ve never afforded one for someone else before, same.
Dating and relating aren’t means to ends. And especially not millionaire ends. Even though we’d all love for that to be our reality, too.
For reasonable relationship expectations: what are you really aiming for? If it’s love, connection, mutual support and understanding… then let’s remember that money diminishes the focus on all the above. Financial success becomes the purpose of the partnership. Not the partnership. And this can often flip into abuse, for everyone. One party feeling used, the other trapped. Resentment all around.
And overall, perhaps the masses need a reminder about reasonable approaches to life: I think it’s time to pull back the wool over our eyes. Stop pretending we live above our means. Stop pretending everything is chill when our nervous systems know that it’s not. And thusly behaving from unacknowledged survival instincts, which could be driving backwards, abusive, self-wrecking, romances.
With that, lettuce:
WRAP
I suppose my point is, we’re in shit times.
And maybe we should start acting like it.
And relating in reference to it.
Chasing or trying to keep up with the bourgeois will make you, your partner, and your relationship conflictual, overly perceptive of problems, and self-worth depleting. Which lay the groundwork for abusing the hell out of each other, in response to the abuse from the government.
So, while I agree, goddamn, it’s too fucking expensive to be alive to date right now…
We have to find ways.
And there are ways – but we need to be realistic about them.
We maybe we’ll have to do something brand new in the traditional world of dating…
Being honest and upfront about our limitations, and relating from there, right out the gate… instead of leading with falsely positive impressions that only produce negative outcomes. And on the receiving end, putting less pressure on grand gestures, impressive meals, and instagrammable events that only perpetuate this socioeconomical obstacle.
Let’s re-examine expectations, survival drives, and what we really seek in relationship, while examining how world uncertainty might be pushing us towards ultimately unhealthy, unhappy, and dissatisfying relationships, as you keep financially wisely….
Dating
In
Dystopia
And I’ll talk to you soon.