Hi, Money, I'm Home!

My boyfriend is going to a dinner out of town to get an award for a film he made, and he didn't invite me. When I told him I felt excluded, he said that he was embarrassed because his parents are paying for his flight and he has to stay with a friend. I get it; he does wonderful work, but he's still struggling financially. Still, if the tables were turned -- if I were getting an award -- I would at least tell him I wish he could come.

--Upset

There are a lot of things Martin Scorsese has been known to say, but one of them is not, "I want you by my side at this festival, and I only have to dig through the trash for 8,234 more cans to make that happen." It isn't surprising that your boyfriend -- as a man -- is more sensitive about being...as they say...brokeahontas than you would be if the (awards dinner) tables were turned. As I frequently explain, men and women aren't just physically different; they evolved to have corresponding psychological differences. A biggie comes out of how there was a far greater potential cost to an ancestral woman from any sex act (pregnancy and a kid to feed) compared with the cost to a man: "Gee, that was a whole teaspoonful of sperm!" So female psychology evolved to push women to look for "providers" -- men with access to resources and a willingness to share them. That's why women go for guys who show signs of wealth, like a temperature-controlled nursery for their sports cars. Wealth is a cue to the all-important ability to bring home the bison. But in ancestral times, we couldn't hang on to stuff -- including food -- because we didn't have refrigerators, let alone houses to keep them in. There was just the meat you could eat before it went bad and your man's ability to hunt it down. So what does it for a lot of women is potential -- signs that a man could soon be, uh, dragging home tasty dead animals (probably shrink-wrapped, unless their guy is good with a crossbow). You seem to be one of those women. (You get that they don't give out film awards to just any doof who shoots a cat video on their iPhone.) If you do believe in your boyfriend, tell him -- regularly, in detail. If he gets that you're proud of him and that you'd be happier eating hot dogs on a bench with him than dining with some corporate drone at Le Whatever, he's less likely to feel he's failing you by being undercapitalized. This should help him be more inclusive in the future -- at least emotionally -- when that "historic location" where he'll be staying is the sagging love seat where his buddy lost his virginity in 1992.