Dating trends have changed. It used to be only men reaching out to girls when interested. These days, girls also ‘toast’ guys. You know they say, ‘a woman can do it better‘. And, some women indeed do the most.

The DM trend has also changed. As much as men enter girls’ DMs to show interest, women also say hi, with an emoji (you know, something to make it light), trying to see if the man may be interested.

The ‘who’s paying?’ trend has changed. There are times when a fellow male passenger pays the fare of the lady sitting beside him. That’s old school, the girl also wants to pay at dinner dates, at the cinema, at a shopping spree. It is not mostly about independence, it is about women sending a message – hellooooooo! we can do it too.

There are men who still go about preaching the male superiority complex, so cannot allow a women pay for anything they are benefitting from. We are not talking about close minded men. Our conversation is on men who see their female partners as partners, not as subordinate half, and people who never have the ability to take care of themselves or anyone else. Even an egg takes care of itself until it hatches.

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There is a relatively new trend. It is guys looking for girls who are independent and know how to spend money on them. It is subtle yet. In fact, on a scale of 1-10, it is somewhere around 2, but it is growing and an exciting trend.

If you ask people around, you will find that men take that as an escape route from mere comfort or brokenness. But, it is just younger people redefining relationships, wanting their female partners to be independent, so they do not have to pay for those basic needs women usually have.

It could be young men realising that keeping the finances of a relationship is not their sole purpose in life. In this case, the man is looking for a lady to pool financial resources to climb a higher financial ladder.

The struggle for equality is still a long way, but we have more women in places where they were not thirty years ago. There are more women as CEOs, C-Suites executives, founders, entrepreneurs, etc. Even women are doing jobs we all defined as solely for men.

It is a small percentage, but it has made men realise that they could also be cared for. This time, not their parents, siblings, or extended family members spending the money, but people they can be partners with.

The cooking girl’s trend is debatable, especially as we stay on track to stop societal norm that the women are the kitchen’s owner. If she has money and cannot cook, why not, please?

That way, they can both create unforgettable memories without one sole partner doing an hourly budget reevaluation to ensure they do not allow sapa enter the conversation.

Meanwhile, some men are just gold drifters. The motivation for these men hovers around concepts like laziness. Those are not in our conversation.