Dear Eric: For the past 10 years, my husband and I have enjoyed dining out with a couple of our friends, always splitting the check evenly.
Recently, we embraced sobriety and no longer consume the expensive drinks that significantly add to the bill. Despite this, we continue to split the check evenly, which doesn’t seem quite fair.
We value our friendship and enjoy our time together, but we are unsure how to approach this topic. We don’t want to look cheap, but we also want to be fair. Is it weird, rude or impolite to request that we each pay for our own meals and drinks moving forward?
— Sober Diner
Dear Diner: Ten years of shared bills is a long time. At a certain point, splitting the check stops being about the money and starts being a gesture of mutual good will.
So, this about-face may feel like it’s coming out of nowhere for your friends. It’s also likely to bring up other possible inequities and invite “nickel and diming” into your meals. Did your friends once order only soup and salad while you dined on steak? Was that unfair? How much was the blue-plate special? Who ordered “gratuity”?
If this is affecting your sobriety or your friendship, you should say something. I wouldn’t frame it using “fairness” – that way is littered with nickels and dimes.
Tell them that though you’ve made this change in your lives, you still love dining with them. Tell them you’d rather not pay for alcohol. This should be easy for them to understand.
(Send questions to R. Eric Thomas at eric@askingeric.com or P.O. Box 22474, Philadelphia, PA 19110. Follow him on Instagram and sign up for his weekly newsletter at rericthomas.com.)
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