[Eagevawax]

The other night my girlfriend (not Thai) and I met a female Thai friend of mine and her boyfriend (also Thai). It was the first time I had met her bf, and the first time for my friend to meet my gf.

Everyone was in their 20's except me, (I am 37). My GF and I live in Japan and my friend and her BF live in Thailand. We all have jobs, my friend's boyfriend is a sound engineer, but it's probably a safe guess to imagine that my income was the highest of all of us.

We went out to dinner and I had every intention of paying for everybody for a number of reasons, one of them being that I had thought it would be expected that I would pay as I am 1. the oldest, and 2. the highest paid, and 3 I invited them out.

So anyway at the end of the night my friend's boyfriend says that he will get the bill and pays with his credit card. I said that I was going to pay and had my wallet ready to do so, but they both said that I should just get it next time I visit Thailand.

It was a nice gesture and I appreciate it, but was it the right thing to allow him to pay? Should I have insisted more forcefully? Did I "lose face" for allowing him to pay? Or did my acquiescing allow him to gain face in front of his girlfriend?

Actually this was the first time I had been back to Thailand in 2 and a half years since I got divorced and I was so used to paying for everybody (ie, exwife and cousins and her friends etc) that it never occured to me that one day I would have someone pay for my dinner in Thailand one day.

Or maybe I'm just over-analysing?