Paying for Paris

I'm going to post this in real-time, the evening I write it, and not back-date it to go with the rest of the Paris posts. It wasn't really a "theme" during the vacation itself. And it only got resolved in the last few days. So it can sit out here in December as an outlier.

Two weeks in Paris aren't going to be cheap, no matter how you do it. We went in November (not "high season" and therefore cheaper). We stayed in "cheap and cheerful" accommodations in the Quartier Latin, rather than more upscale tourist digs. We didn't go to the Moulin Rouge, or any other expensive entertainment. And still, it … wasn't cheap. Paris never is. 

Each of us bought our own plane ticket. But for the sake of simplicity, I made all the arrangements. And for the most part, while we were on the ground, I paid all the bills. Marie bought her own souvenirs, of course. When she had agreed to pick up X or Y for someone back home, she bought those. But I paid for all our joint expenses: the hotel, the Metro passes, admission to all the sights, all of our food. That stuff. I told her we'd settle up when we got home.

So naturally, once we got home she started asking me, "What do I owe you?" When I was slow to answer, she mailed me a check for $500 as a "first installment" and then insisted that I deposit it so that she could keep track of her bank balance. (Gosh, sweetie, have you ever thought of using a checkbook?)

I had the data. Once all my credit card charges came through (since of course my receipts were in euros and not dollars) it was a straightforward task to add up that our joint expenses came to a total of $4520.17. Half that is $2260.08. So presumably her share—minus the $500 she had already sent me—should have come to $1760.08. That's just arithmetic.

But it took me a month before I could decide what to tell her. And when I finally did, it went like this:

The longer I think about this, the fewer advantages I can find in keeping this an open topic. If you find yourself with spare cash you should probably stuff it in your emergency pouch to guard against the next time something unexpected happens to your car or your cats. (God forbid either of those!) I don't see where you benefit by sending it to me.

In other words, "Never mind. I'll pay it. Run along and play."

But why?

At an emotional level, the answer is chivalry: I'm the guy and she's the girl, so I'll pay our joint bills. But there's more to it than that.

When we first started seeing each other (or dating, or fucking, or however you want to describe it), she made a point of wanting to be treated as a financial equal. (So did D, as you might recall, before she welched on the deal.) In fact, Marie told herself a story about my marriage that placed a lot of weight on Wife's financial abuse of me, so it became terribly important to her that I not see her as a financial leech. After I picked up the tab for dinner a few times out of sheer habit, she went all sulky on me and then we had to have a Long Talk over email to straighten things out again because she had been telling herself the most hateful things. Sheesh. OK, fine. You want to be a financial equal? We can do it that way. Whatever.

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Then two years ago—almost three, really (March 2021)—she sent me the email that I describe in this post here, telling me that she couldn't afford to keep paying for flights to come see me, and accepting all the blame for the situation in a brilliant display of passive-aggressive magnanimity that plainly meant (reading between the lines) that it was all my fault.

I'd been wondering when that shoe was going to drop. Waiting a full five years was pretty clever, because it definitely put me off guard.

We bickered about that for a while. I think I paid for her next flight to come see me, but we kicked down the road the more general question of principle about how to handle expenses in the future.

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The next year (summer 2022), we agreed to split our mutual expenses for the vacation at her family's summer cottage. Because we rented a car for the week, and because I wanted to buy the optional insurance (which has helped me before), those expenses added up quickly. Her share amounted to a little over $600, and she sent me a check before the end of the summer. But only a couple of months later, she let me know in a panic that her landlord was asking her to renew her lease early, and her rent was going up, and they were going to start charging her for her cats, and she'd abruptly decided to look online for other housing in her area but couldn't find anything as cheap as what she already had, and ohmygod-what-was-she-going-to-do???

Gosh, sweetie, I have no idea. Good thing you're a financial equal, ain't it?

In the end, I refunded her the amount she had paid me for "her half" of our vacation expenses; and with the extra $600 in her bank account, she calmed down.

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Now it's 2023, and in principle she "owes" me almost three times as much money as was in question a year ago. What am I going to do? Take it from her? I'd have every reason to accept it—two thousand dollars is a non-trivial chunk of change. But at this point I'm convinced that if I do, she's going to have emergency car repairs, or emergency veterinary bills, or some damned thing is going to come up to jeopardize her financial equilibrium. And I'm going to have to listen to all the angst, all the fear, and all the chaos, until I cave in and give her back her money.

Screw it. I'll just let her keep her damned money, and pay for all the rest of the trip myself. Sure, maybe it's chivalry. Or maybe I just have no confidence in her ability to handle her own finances. "Run along and play."

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Marie's reaction to my offer was pure gratitude.

I apologize; obviously I misunderstood.  I had thought that it was inconvenient for you to shoulder the whole cost of our wonderful trip and that you WANTED me to pay my fair share, and that the awkwardness came from determining what would be fair. 

Now it sounds like you'd rather make Paris be your gift to me financially as well.

If that's how you want it to be, I will accept gratefully.  

I'd probably never have gotten off my butt and actually made it to Paris were it not for you; I certainly can't imagine a better companion, or that I would have done so much that I loved without you at my side.  So Paris is already something you gave me; now you've given it doubly.

I suppose it's just as well that she can't read my mind, and doesn't understand the reasons behind my gift. Oh well, the gratitude is sweet, Sure, I'll take it.