Strength need not become a liability

We’d been dancing and talking for hours. As far as first dates go, this was a particularly long and sweet one. He even recited one of his beautiful poems while sitting on a bench on Main Street in Santa Monica.

Then, right in the middle of our first meal together -- a wee-hour breakfast at Norm’s -- our waitress started blabbering. In a matter of minutes, Mars and Venus collided on the table.

Next to my English muffin and his pancakes were a married woman’s misplaced sense of power and the sobering reality of why so many relationships fail today.

The waitress told us she has been married 14 years and bragged that she doesn’t have to account for her behavior in her marriage because she owns her house and she doesn’t need her husband.

As she spoke, and my date smiled in amusement, I couldn’t help but feel sad for her and even a little sad for myself.

During the last 13 years, I’ve lived alone in four cities; I’ve never had a roommate. But being resilient and resourceful does not mean that I want to stand alone forever, any more than that admission means I’m weak or looking for a man to complete my life. It just means I’m ready to share my life with the right person.

Sustaining a relationship, however, is turning out to be one of the toughest challenges of my generation.

Women who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s were taught that we could do anything, and that we should strive to do as much as we could find time for. We work eight to 12 hours a day, proving ourselves in a marketplace that increasingly rewards us for becoming more assertive and less feminine.

At the same time, we expect and demand chivalry, sensitivity, support and respect from the men in our lives. We are to be tough career women, so strong and independent that we don’t need the love and support of men. But we still want men to behave like Prince Charming, even though to avoid appearing weak, we withhold the soft feminine energy that attracts men to women in the first place.

So a waitress who admirably was able to afford her own house isn’t satisfied unless she makes the man in her life feel unworthy of sharing it with her and, ultimately, unworthy of her love.

No wonder we are all staying single longer.

Men cannot figure out when a woman wants to be treated as an independent equal and when she wants to be cuddled and protected, so they often opt to withdraw altogether.

Embittered women, in turn, are left to ponder whether graduate degrees and high-powered jobs are worth the loneliness, instead of striking an internal balance in which independence and femininity are not adversaries.

As the waitress left our table, my date said something about the fact that women expect men to read their minds. Then he talked about Prince Charming and how men are always going to be at a loss because no man, no matter how attentive, can meet those idealistic standards.

My thoughts flashed to my past and how my strength may have inadvertently worked as a shield. How could a man know whether I was ready to be vulnerable if I never showed it? I glanced at the joyous man across the table, exhaled and decided to stop the madness. A satisfying relationship isn’t about pretending to be less strong so a man will feel more comfortable. It’s about allowing our femininity to blend organically with our intelligence, strength and talents so that we both can be comfortable extending ourselves.

We have not returned to Norm’s, but we’ve shared plenty of other meals. I’m not looking for Prince Charming, but I think I may be getting to know his little brother.

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Maria Elena Fernandez can be contacted at maria.elena.fernandez@latimes.com.