Girlfriend Test A Quiz for Women Who Want to Be a Better Date and a Better Mate

introduction An attachment injury is an abandonment or betrayal of trust during a critical moment of need. --S. M. JOHNSON, J. A. MAKINEN, AND J. W. MILLIKIN, JOURNAL OF MARITAL AND FAMILY THERAPY (2001) It was 8:20 P.M. It was a Tuesday night. It was a first date. And I was having an absolute panic attack. Actually, I wouldn't have let myself have a full-on attack complete with tears because that would have ruined my mascara, but I was at least having trouble breathing and had a slight pain in my chest. The catalyst was this: My date, a cute, young doctor, was 20 minutes late and had not shown yet. I was acting like my father had just died. While a part of me knew that my knight-in-shining-armor (for the moment) was indeed on his way, another part of me felt utter terror about the possibility of being stood up. Consequently, when the guy finally did show his adorable face at my apartment door, my fear had somehow morphed into anger, and there was not much he could do to win me over. Granted, showing up 20 minutes late on a first date is somewhat rude, a great indicator that a man doesn't respect a woman's boundaries, but my panic at his lateness was way over the top. It was the kind of anger more suited for a late car-service pickup, not a truant boy-toy. Yet my brain had confused the two. Obviously, I had some "issues" I was unaware of. In short, I was lousy girlfriend material. What Is a Great Girlfriend? I have a giant confession to make. When I began to write this book, I had no idea about how to truly be great girlfriend material. I mean, I know what fashion magazines tell us about creating physical attractiveness and I can name a few smart girlfriend tricks that seemed to have worked in some of my own relationships, but I never really knew what great girlfriend material meant from a man's point of view. For better or worse, I had never been inside the head of a man. Besides being uninformed on the subject, I was also crippled with prejudice. Forgive my sexist perspective, but since learning that the average man's use of the Internet is limited to the three S's-stocks, sports, and sex-I assumed that those subjects occupied most of the real estate in guys' noggins. Since those three S's loosely translate into "make money, fight, and get laid," I also figured that anything else of value-like, oh ya, feelings-was tucked away in some low-rent walk-up in their cerebral cortex to be unearthed only by their mothers. Remember who Puff Daddy, er, I mean P-Diddy, gushed with gratitude for when his butt was saved from jail? That's right. His manly tears spilled for Mom and his almighty. Granted, he couldn't thank his girlfriend who had split during his trial. But I'll bet this wasn't the first time that Mom caused a stir in his, uh, in his heart. Now here's where my confession continues. I'm taking a deep breath now. I was W-R-O-N-G. Men actually have feelings and want more from women than sex. Wow. As I began to interview many men and ask them to confide in me about what worked and what didn't work in women's games of seduction, I was stunned to hear very little about physical attraction, and a whole lot about emotional qualities. When asked what made a woman a great catch, I heard nothing about face makeup and plenty about brain makeup. I was stunned. Granted, at times, trying to obtain adjectives to explain cliche terms like needy and high maintenance was like pulling teeth. I stand by my sexist opinion that we women are the gender that excels in language. Men are the gender that excels in keeping secrets. To back me up, psychologists have a diagnosis for people who have an inability to express feelings with words. It's called alexithymia. In fact, the condition is so widespread among American males that a new subgroup has been added to the disorder; it's called normative male alexithymia. Basically, it means "can't finWalsh, Wendy is the author of 'Girlfriend Test A Quiz for Women Who Want to Be a Better Date and a Better Mate' with ISBN 9780609809419 and ISBN 0609809415.