After 17 years of marriage, getting back into the dating scene came with its own surprises.
“The first thing I noticed was that I was getting hit on by younger men. I am talking about boys in their 20s who reminded me of my nephews!” In the beginning, this used to unnerve her until it was spelt out to her: for every single, older, outgoing woman who exhibited some form of financial muscle, there was a trail of younger men seeking to strike a ‘friendship’. Social media has made it easier, Angela tells me. She shows me her Facebook Messenger feed, pointing out about five or so messages from individuals who look like young men.
“We all know what this is,” she shrugs. “I recently found out that they are called Ben 10s.” She laughs. She does not come right out and say it, but from our conversation, I gather she has no qualms with spending money on a man in exchange for companionship. “I think as long as you are both clear about the terms and boundaries, then to each and their own.” She is of the opinion that it is the young men who are seeking women like her out, not the other way round.
The kept man has always been a common fixture along the Kenyan coast. Older foreign women regularly carouse with young Kenyan men, generally known as ‘beach boys’ and contributing to the sex tourism scene. The women do this because they are lonely, and the young men sleep with them for gifts, outings, cash and sometimes even access to property.
This scenario begs the question: is this mutual relationship – where the woman takes care of the finances in exchange for the man’s body and companionship – an act of exploitation or of female liberation? “I think it’s a double standard on both men and women,” says 35-year-old Alice, who is married with two children. “If a man was paying younger girls for sex, it would be called exploitation, but when a woman does it, it is ‘fending off loneliness’. If the roles were reversed, the men would be called predators and the women prostitutes not ‘romance tourism’ and ‘beach girls’!”
But how about every day dating life among peers? Have the gender roles around money and provision undergone a revolution?
DATING DUTCH?
Five of us ladies are gathered at the terrace of Sarit Centre’s News Café for an afternoon of coffee, wine and cake.
There is an understanding among us girlfriends that everyone pays their way. As the waiter hands each one of us our separate bills, Christine, a 28-year-old sales and marketing executive, starts laughing. She explains that she went on a date where the man put half the amount in the billfold before sliding it across the table to her. “Me, I just don’t understand men nowadays,” she quips, setting her wine glass on the table to allow articulate gesturing. “It is not that I cannot pay for a meal. And it is not that I want your money. But if you take me out on a date, I expect you to pay for it. That is what men do! Why have they lost sight of that fact? Women aren’t supposed to pay for dates!”
While half the women on the table bemoan the fact that Kenyan men are no longer going out of their way to wine and dine the women in their lives, the other half argues that it does not matter either way. Christine, who is in the former camp, says it matters. “When is the last time a man asked you out on real date?” Christine demands.
“Nowadays they ask you to join him and his boys for drinks while they watch the game or they ask you to come over to his house. That is not a date! They just don’t want to invest any time and money. I think men have gotten lazy. Not only that,” she adds, “but me I don’t see how a man can be comfortable with coming to my house and eating my food for a whole weekend and not spending a dime! What kind of a man is that?!”
Lena, who is 32, works for a venture capital fund and is the ultra-feminist of the group, is of the opinion that equality means that everyone should pay their share while on a date. “Money is power,” she asserts, “and the one who wields and uses it always has an advantage over the other.”
Lena knows this from experience. “I connected with this 26-year-old guy on Tinder. He is an intern. He lives in (she mentions a less-than-perfect neighborhood in Nairobi). I couldn’t go out there so I asked him to come over to my side of town. I think from that point – when we compared jobs and neighbourhoods – the dynamics of our relationship were established. I took charge. Today, I usually pick him up from Westlands. When I can’t, I ask him to use an Uber and I’ll pay for it. If we go out, I choose where we go. I foot the bills. We always hang out at my place. In fact he has never once mentioned anything about me going to his place.”
WHAT’S IN IT FOR YOU?
Lena says she is fully aware that this is not a love relationship. “I like him a lot and we have a lot of laughs, but I am not delusional,” she says, “For example, I get the feeling that I can’t hang out with him when I’m broke. Our relationship is not that real. When he comes over, even if we are just staying indoors, I still use a lot of money on groceries and take-outs on extravagant stuff I otherwise wouldn’t consume. He does not ask for money, but this is very much a sex and money dynamic.”
Lindsay, 40, a teacher at an international school, tells us about a friend who is having second thoughts about her engagement.
“She says she loves the man but she needs to fully accept that when they do get married, she is going to be the primary bread-winner. She says she doesn’t want to end the relationship because he is a good, caring man, but on the other hand, she worries that the fact that he does not have any career and financial ambitions will become a problem in the future. The other day she told me that he said he doesn’t mind staying home and raising the kids. She is a career high-flyer and I think she is struggling with the idea of having a house-band and how that would look like and what others would think.”
Lena leans back in her seat, weighs a thought and then says, “Perhaps the question isn’t whether more men are looking for rich or successful women, but whether more women aren’t feeling the need to be provided for by men. If we are not asking for it, we don’t get it.”
The argument then follows that, in evolutionary terms, males who provided had better chances of getting a mate. But today, since women can provide for themselves, a man who can provide is no longer a prerequisite for getting a mate. In other words, Christine concludes, “We are giving it up too easily and not demanding anything in return. And the men are only happy to oblige!”
“A lot of men would be better men if they were required to be men.” That is a statement made by comedian Steve Harvey. “The very core of manhood is to be the provider. That is our role, our purpose”, he writes. “If you’ve been taught all your life to go Dutch on your dates, and pull out your own check book when it comes to paying your bills, and you’ve been repeatedly told you can’t depend on a man to do anything for you, then it’s understandable why you can’t wrap your mind around this simple concept. But remember what drives a man: real men do what they have to do to make sure their people are taken care of. If they are doing anything less than that, they are not men – or shall we say they are not your man, because he will eventually do this for someone’s daughter.”
Harvey is of the opinion that there are different way to provide besides monetarily. “Your man could be broke,” he writes, “but he is going to do everything within his power to make up for this by supplying your need in other tangible way. When I was a young man I was in a relationship with a woman I thought I loved. I had just dropped out of college, was in between jobs, just starting to find my way as a comedian. I was struggling and she was holding it down for us financially, I admit, but I thought I was more than making up for my lack of cash by being all I could be around the house – doing what was necessary to keep our house in order. See that’s what being in a relationship is all about – finding that balance even in the middle of adversity.”
