by I never imagined a sweet, carefully planned first date would end with a spreadsheet-style breakdown of my supposed “debt.” Every gesture he’d framed as chivalry—flowers, dinner, the engraved keychain—was suddenly recast as an itemized charge. The line that stunned me most wasn’t the cost of the meal; it was “emotional labor,” as if listening and talking were services I had purchased from him.
Mia’s outrage snapped me out of second-guessing myself. She and Chris turning his behavior into a joke exposed how absurd—and quietly dangerous—his mindset was. The more they pushed back, the more his entitlement showed, unraveling into anger and self-pity when his “invoice” didn’t work. I blocked him, and they cut him off. What stayed with me wasn’t fear, but clarity: real generosity doesn’t come with a bill, and genuine respect doesn’t demand repayment for basic human decency.
