Female Supremacy Articles - Page 26

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Ms. Rowland, like some other women interviewed, said that she has come to the conclusion that it would be easier to date someone in the same economic bracket.

''I love traveling, going to the opera and good restaurants,'' she said. ''It doesn't have to be Per Se, but good food is important in my life. It's sometimes hard to maintain the lifestyle I'm used to when I'm in a relationship with a guy who makes less than me, since I don't want to be paying for the guy I'm with all the time.''

The discomfort over who pays for what seems to be not really about money, plain and simple. Instead, it is suggestive of the complex psychology of what many of these women expect from their dates (for him to be a traditional breadwinner) and what they think they should expect (Oh, I just want him to be a nice guy).

On a first date at a lounge in Hell's Kitchen, Thrupthi Reddy, 28, a brand strategist in Manhattan, watched her date down several cocktails to her one, then not even flinch when she handed the waitress her credit card. Initially miffed, she recognized her own contradictions.

''You wonder if you're being a hypocrite,'' she recalled, ''because all date long I'm telling him how independent I was, and how annoying it was that men wouldn't date strong independent women.'' (The relationship ended after six months.)