Full disclosure, I haven’t read the book. But I did read this excerpt, and quite a few articles written by angry women -- make that furious women -- who think Gottlieb is suggesting they all grab a hold of the next skanky loser who sidles up to them at the bar and march his ass directly down the aisle. I get it -- even the excerpt grated on some of my nerves. But bits of it also rang true. Bottom line? A lot of my single girlfriends have totally unrealistic standards. Standards that they themselves could never dream of meeting. There, I said it. I’m flinching now. Like someone’s going to reach through the computer and smack me.

Anyway -- here’s my real point: I was head over heels for Jack. Like stupid in love. From the gate. And yet, single girlfriends would regularly counsel me to think long and hard about continuing to date (even date, mind you) someone who made as little money as Jack did at that point. It was an easy target (and really the only target): Jack was movie star good looking, a true gentleman, funny as hell, and nuts about me. So there was little to criticize other than the money thing. “Potential was fine when we were 20,” I remember one of them saying. I’m pretty sure we were 21 at the time. I think there’s something about really driven, high-achieving women today that tells them to keep trading up until they reach perfection. I’m reminded of the Voltaire quote: Perfect is the enemy of the good.