Social Norm Violations

Ever since I was allowed to date, I was taught that the man is supposed to pay for the dinner bill. The man paying the bill rule is definitely supposed to be obeyed when you are dating. The man is also supposed to open all doors and pull out the lady’s chair. Let all alone, the man is supposed to pick the lady up and drive to the date . Therefore, I decided to violate the norm of paying the bill on a date. The guy that I am dating is very headstrong and strongly believe that the man is supposed to pay for the bill. I have been dating him for a couple months and I have not paid for a bill yet. I offered a few times and he always shut down my request. I never really pressed the issue. I picked this norm to violate because it goes against one

When I decided on what norm I was going to violate, I did not think I was going to get nervous at all. I knew that it should not be a big deal about who pays the bills. I know it should not matter if a girl or a boy pays the bill. Doing this exercise taught me that people feel uncomfortable when gender roles are broken. I realized that gender norms does have huge influence on behavior. By me paying the bill, I stepped outside of my social construct which made my date be outside of his social construct/normal role. The social construct for my date would have been him paying the bill. In class, we learned that women seldom interrupt men but men frequency interrupt women. I found that interesting because I decided not to interrupt my date when he was explaining his frustration. I knew the conversation would be more effective if I let him finish explaining himself. My experience did reinforce that our society believes that men is supposed to handle the finances. I do not think race plays a major role in that expectation because our waitress was a difference race than us. I realized that I expected the guy to always pay for the bill even if I did offer randomly. Me paying the bill on the date did go against my values and my date’s values, which explained why he was frustrated. This assignment made me realized that it is perfectly okay to break gender norms. Overall, I now have no problem with paying a bill on a date and I do not care what the waitress/waiter may