Part 10: ‘After our week away, he came with his Excel file with all the costs’ | Sex & Relationships

As far as I’m concerned, stinginess is one of the ugliest qualities a person can have and one of the biggest turn offs in men. In fact, it’s just a deal breaker these days. ugh!

I know what I’m talking about because I dated a miser for quite a while. Of course there is the well-known First Dates-question ‘Who takes the box?’, but this went much further than that. On the road with Scrooge McDuck; with this currants every cent was weighed. And if there is something insufferably unattractive…

The scraping started

His name was Kevin, he had a successful business and two houses in Amsterdam, one of which he rented out. He had a generous income, but turned out to be as greedy as anyone can be. I believe he paid for the first date, but then the scraping started. The second meeting he didn’t even have any money in his pocket and from that moment on everything was ‘split’. Read: weighed on a gold dish. So keep receipts!

Treat at the Action

When he had initiated a nice day out (museum, dinner) I got another Tikkie two weeks later. If we went to the Appie together to get dinner, which we would cook at my house, the costs were for me anyway. With a bit of luck, he also added some of his personal groceries (detergent, spreads, a soup package) on the belt. Which, generous as I am, I never made a point of it. The time we were at the Action and I wanted to pay for a screwdriver, he generously said ‘I’ll give you that!’ I still feel retroactive disgust as I type this.

Two pallets of cleaning vinegar

Everything suffered from his scratchiness. When I suggested a road trip (by car, of course), he said: “I’m not going to park that expensive, we’ll go by bus.” When I asked if he could pick me up from work, I was asked, “Why is it raining?” In the meantime, he drove half the city for discounts, profit packs and stunt prices. Before every purchase, 23 apps had to be checked for any digital discount coupons. Kevin was also a fan of the Makro, where he bought everything in mega-stocks for a few cents extra discount, only to end up looking at two pallets of bottles of cleaning vinegar all year round. So much sourness (or was it frugality?) for an edge didn’t exactly make Kevin any more attractive.

When his couch sagged mid-summer, he decided to wait until Black Friday (yes, November) to buy a new one, so we spent months on a rug on the floor thanks to his stinginess. Not much of a party after all.

The time he surprised me with an overnight stay at the hotel, the receptionist stated at check-in: “Wouldn’t it be nice to have a free night’s stay with a new washing machine?” I fell through the ground. How can you be like this? It used to be that we could laugh with each other so much, but my disgust was growing by the week.

At a certain point I couldn’t do anything intimately anymore. I was totally blocked by his stinginess. Completely locked by this Schraalhans. And why keep kissing a currant if he never turns into a prince?

Holiday with a miser

I thought perhaps the worst was the time that I had booked (and paid for) a midweek in the Ardennes for us. We stayed in a luxury holiday villa including our own pool and made some trips in the area ourselves. When I got home I was presented with the bill. Kevin had recorded all expenses for the five days in an Excel file. Accurate to the cent after the decimal point. Every drink, every meal, the petrol, the parking costs, even the €0.50 from my road toilet visit was in it. If I wanted to tick off €236.52. A tap… er slap in the face. The final blow that is.

Tactless Tikkies

I can handle my own business just fine and a man doesn’t have to pay everything for me at all, but I couldn’t stomach that someone looks so ugly in it. Since this romantic bankruptcy, all alarm bells have gone off if a man on date one shows any hesitation when ‘the box’ comes on the table. I’d rather spend a lifetime just treating myself than dating a man who sends me tactless Tikkies.

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