Claire Conger

My mother thinks that the reason I don’t have a man is because I scare them. Maybe she’s right.

There’s this cute guy I met at my ski club lodge—Potential Boyfriend Number One—with whom, the night I met him, a gaggle of women in high heels and midriff-baring tops were flirting wildly. While they chatted and laughed and got hammered drinking wine, I shuffled around in my Crocks cooking vegetables. (Oh, I’m so boring, he couldn’t be interested in me!)

While they yakked about inappropriate footwear and jiggled chunky bellies—midriff baring tops being not the best fashion choice for this crew—he took a meaningful look at my appropriate footwear. Hum, what does this mean?

It wasn’t two weeks later that he shows up at my yoga class and makes a point of reminding me who he is. Next class he’s giving me a touchy hello. Next class he’s put his mat next to mine. Next class—this is where I slip up—we’re doing handstands—easy if you’ve been trained—and he can’t do it, so I come over to help him, but still he can’t do it.

It’s been a month, and I haven’t seen him since! Wah!

Was I supposed to

1) not do a handstand if he can’t? Not a good answer.

2) not help him? I help other people and they seem to appreciate it.

I wasn’t trying to be special or better. Maybe, his not showing up again has nothing to do with me.

But, however, I definitely had this problem when I was dating Mr Zero. (Dear Reader, you may recall that Mr Zero is the only man I’ve dated whom I really wanted to marry, the man from whom all others are measured, hence the name Mr Zero.)

I was trying too hard to be perfect, to show him that I was worthy of his affection, that I think I wore him out. At one point, he wailed, “Please let me be better than you at something!” (I think we were mountain biking where he leaves me in the dust, which I find quite rude.)

But all the while I was trying to excel it was because I though he was so much better than I. I would never measure up to be good enough for him.

So what does Dr Phil have to say about this? I look for an answer in his Love Smart. Chapter 3, The Character of You: Dr Phil tells us girls to figure out who we are and what we have to offer. If when we’re with a man we are thinking What does he want? we won’t get anywhere. That’s what I was doing with Mr Zero—imagining what a perfect man would want and trying to be that perfect woman.

However, with Potential Boyfriend Number One, I was doing simply what Dr Phil says to do, offer what I have. Potential Number One can learn to handstand easily, and be better at it than I in no time. But he doesn’t know that and unless he comes back, I have no way of telling him.

Why is that male ego so fragile? If a girl’s better at something, can’t it just be so?

You can’t diminish your physical or mental capacities to fit beneath someone else in every way, or you’ll die.