He had taken his last dessert bite. We have only been out together for three weeks, but that was all, the ideal time to ask the most important question of our relationship.
I reached on the other side of the table, attached his hand, looked in his eyes and said: “Do you want to open a joint bank account with me?”
He laughed, a surprise bark that made the couple at the next table. I felt my pulse in my throat while waiting for him to realize that I was not joking.
His laughter was when he saw my expression. I looked at her face to change, the fun moving away while his hand was always under mine. The tingling of silverware, the murmur of conversations and the soft music playing above the head seemed to stop, waiting for its answer.
“You are serious,” he said, not quite a question.
I nodded, dried in my mouth. It wasn’t that I had imagined this conversation. In my head, he would have been charmed by my frankness, perhaps even impressed by my practicality. Instead, it seemed to have just asked him for his kidney.
When the server approached the check, I felt my chest tightening. It was once again, the moment that has been haunted for years.
While other people endeavor on the first intimacies or define their relationship, my anxiety of meetings had always focused: who will pay?
This anxiety started when I insisted to pay everything. Comedy shows, IMAX tickets, three dishes dinners – all me. I would prevent any hand that dared to reach the bill, putting a big show on the way I had to pay.
My friends could not believe that I left all these guys the financial hook, but they did not understand. In my American Chinese family, paying for dinner is considered an honor, and my parents, aunts and uncles would threaten bodily injury to win this privilege.
The family ritual has always started when someone whispered “mǎi dān” (check, please) to the server. Despite the subtlety, each adult would straighten up as animals feeling an earthquake, transforming dinner into a royal battle.
“Let go of the bill!”
“I will kill you if you pay again!”
“Give it to me where I will name your grandson after this accountant who ruined your taxes!”
The chaos that followed was spectacular, the chairs scraping while people rush on the tables, baguettes flashing in abandoned plates in the middle of the bottle. Someone’s round would inevitably drag the black bean sauce when he was desperate for the check presenter.
I loved this show, taking bets with my cousins on who would come out victorious. My uncle had fast hands and the advantage of sitting closest to the aisle, but my aunt was cunning; She would intercept the server before he even reaches our table, slipping his credit card while pretending to ask the dessert menu.
One evening, after my aunt “won”, my parents sent me to crawl under the table to slide money in his bag. I was proud of their ICT scheme with an intelligent inverted draw, a way for them to save against after losing the bill.
But on returning home, I heard my parents think about other ways to repay my aunt through grocery store and clothes for her children. When I asked why, they explained that my aunt had just lost his job and could not really afford this dinner. Everyone had left him “win” the bill to allow him to save his face. I had it completely behind.
Suddenly, I saw the system developed behind chaos. When my parents “won” because I had raised the honey shrimp in walnut, or when my cousin was allowed to pay because his stock of apples had recently skyrocketed, everything made sense. Behind the theatrical bill, the struggle was a tradition of care, ensuring that everyone was taken care of according to their situation.
But when we were in an in-n-out and my uncle waged my father’s credit card, then my mother threatened to “murder” his mother if he did not return it, I was mortified. The teenagers online behind us looked at and ricanied. Other customers stood frozen, tightening their red plastic trays like shields. The cashier looked worried. Her voice crossed chaos: “They are just burgers,” she said.
Under the fluorescent lights and in the middle of the smell of fryer oil, the sacred ritual of my family suddenly looked like an embarrassing spectacle. I retired in a corner, my burning face while I was trying to make myself invisible, wishing to be able to deny these “strange Chinese”.
Years later, watching my family fight to pay had grasped my subconscious a compulsive need to pay for all my dinner dates. Although I don’t expect anyone outside my family understanding our tradition, I couldn’t help but feel resentment when my dates never fought. Especially when I was dismissed. I felt like nobody watched me like my family had looked for my aunt.
It was confusing. My dates surely understood that I could not continue to place the bill. They made more money than me! Did they notice when I started to suggest Chipotle? A guy let me pay each invoice for three months, undoubtedly tapping the back to allow women’s empowerment.
Did I have the kind of boastful that implied that I subsid our meals from a trust fund? It was exasperating to date in a culture where no one was talking about money, but there, I was made after an appointment with 20-minute conversations on the weather instead of discussing financial empathy in relations.
I tried to kiss common American dating tactics: let him pay (“He owes me!”), In turn (dinner dear on him, coffee on me), going Dutch (everyone for themselves!). But everything wanted to try to love a itching sweater. I wanted what my family had, the instinct to notice and take care of each other.
Then I met Aodhán. While I was sitting with him with the light flowing through the restaurant windows, I had an idea. What if there was a way to adapt the tradition of my family to go out together? When he finished his dessert, I asked him to open a joint account. This would leave one to make us the honorable gesture to fight for the bill while ensuring that we are systematically taken care of behind the scenes, no matter who “won”.
But Aodhán was sitting there. We had just learned to comment on each other. He folded his arms and pushed back into his chair. “I have not had a joint bank account since I was 10 years old,” he said in his Irish accent, “with my mom.”
I felt again like this shameful teenager in in-n-out. I looked out the window, bringing together the words to defend my proposal. When I turned to him, what came out instead was: “It liked this spring.”
We have spent the next 20 minutes talking about the weather.
I expected it to ghost me. To my surprise, he organized our next meeting in Citibank, where we sat in front of a banker who continued to take a look between us with barely hidden confusion.
“How long have you been?” He asked, a pen is ready on papers.
“Three weeks,” I said. Aodhán moved to his chair.
The banker blinked. “And you want to open a joint current account.”
“Gold check,” I said. “With our two names on debit cards.”
The process lasted 45 minutes. The banker guided us to protect the overdrafts, minimum sales and monthly costs with the enthusiasm of someone who read a telephone directory. Aodhán answered questions about his employment status and visa documentation while I filled the forms, we both maintain the claim that it is a perfectly normal behavior of the fourth date.
When the banker gave us our temporary debit cards, I felt something that I had not felt in years of meetings: relief. No love, no butterflies, just the simple comfort of knowing that someone understood what counted for me, even if he did not intuitively understand why.
Aodhán revealed that he had his own reasons to adopt my proposal. As a foreigner in America for less than a year, he had trouble establishing a credit. The joint account would help him build the financial foundation he needed.
He did not understand the traditions of my family; How could he? However, in a way, in our incompatible needs, we had stumbled on something that worked. I needed a way to practice care and the reciprocity with which I grew up, and he needed to build a life in a new country.
It became our model when we continued to go out together. We did not need to fully understand the history of each other, but we found ways to honor what was important for each of us – two people from different worlds learning to operate the romance in our own terms.
Nine years later, we are married to several joint accounts, including a university fund for our 4 -year -old child. It is almost at the perfect crawling height under the table for an inverted pickpocket. My aunts and uncles will never see him coming.
