re: so this girl i'm messing around with wants me to pay her rent

OP your real problem is your career not letting you have a real social life. You are wasting valuable years that could be spent searching for a life partner instead of supporting a semi hooker.

You don't want to start too late on building a family and finding the right girl, because by the time you are in your 30's almost all of the available options will have baggage like kids or craziness.

Unless of course your life plan is to make huge bank and then get a gold digging ho that will poison your food to put you in the grave quicker so she can get her payday and move onto the next chump. If that is your goal paying this girl's rent might actually be good practice.