I know, but it seems short sighted to me to accept only a single possibility for dating which involves spending a lot of money

Cite your sources

doesn't mean they exist in abundance or in your area.

i'm sure some humble ice cream date lady exists for me, but she probably lives in another state. where I live women think you're a jerk if you want to take them out on a cheap date, and if's not a 'nice' date unless it's $500 or less. and yes, they look at the tab and judge you by how much 'spend' you are putting out.

Bingo. It's the ones stuck in the gender and conformity roles getting plucked the hardest.

Nuts to that.

But are you interested in someone that wants this? Is that someone you want to have as a partner?

If no, then there is no point in spending so much.

If yes, there is truly not really another way except spend a bunch.

Putting so much emphasis on money and wealth is a thing very popular in the manosphere and around social media. It isn't that widespread in reality. It also depends on where you meet people. If you meet them at an expensive hobby meeting like golf or something, it's pretty likely that they want someone who is willing to spend money.

Do you know women platonically? Maybe ask them what they want on dates(doesn't mean you have to ask them out, just to get a different perspective), see if that matches what you perceive.

How about spending $30 to eat something good while meeting a new person? You talk as if dates were simple transactions where you pay for the possibility of having sex with someone. If that's dating for you than you're right, just go get a hooker.

..that's what the world has become..

No, that is what you're letting the world become. Don't passively accept any social conformity - esp. when it demands larger and larger amounts of capital.

You let it get this way when you accept it as such. I've never made much money, (nor has the spouse) never saw spending money as an option to coincide with dating, (and no, I was not coming from the obnoxious angle that the man has to pay..) so when I started hanging out with the person I eventually would marry, there was no notion that a date involved anything other than hanging out.

Window shopping, coffee and conversation.. hell bring a thermos with your own coffee and pack a meal.

(at this point, neither of us drinks alcohol - I was putting out the recycling back in 2009, and saw the beer bottles and cans and had the epiphany that it was an awful lot of money spent on something that did me no good whatsoever. Naah, fuck that shit. Done. A moment of revelation that my husband latched on to after yet another one of his friends drank themselves to death a handful of years ago.. when you hit your 50's and start to lose friends to booze.. it's an eye opener - red warning flags - for sure..)

I guess what I'm seeing in what you're saying is that there is some informally formal rules for dating that involve spending ever larger amounts of cash.. and that what I have found, in finding that perfect person, was that there are no rules to the dance.

If how everyone "dates" has become a cash grab based on expectations of what you're "supposed" to like to do... Naah. Push back on that. Honestly you do not have to follow any path laid down before you. It's up to you to change the dance steps.

Step outside the box. You have way more agency than you realize.

..Heck, even in your own example your first date was in a bar, which now a days is a dozens of dollars experience for just a few drinks..

Pro tip for anyone still reading this far down into the thread: If you've a hotel - like a Sheraton, Hilton or any higher-end lodging.. Check out their lounge. The cheapest drinks in the city I live in are at the hotels - they generally will price cocktails 35 to 50% lower than the bars and clubs in the area, simply to catch a little bit of the cocktails action.. (also the hotels all have beautiful lounges)

Last time I went to New Orleans I stayed in a hotel on the edge of the French Quarter and drank for one fifth of the price that the drinks outside cost. Got good and oiled THEN headed out to hear live music.

LOL! I guess it's all realtive to what you've experienced of a place..

Chinatown is fricking spic and span compared to what it used to be when it was the Combat Zone in the 70's and 80's and you could watch the whores strutting up and down the sidewalk in front of the Naked Eye Lounge - with it's neon eyeball sign blinking open between a pair of women's legs. Used to be an insanely great Pho restaurant across the street from that.