Remaining Chased

I have a history of terrible relationships that end in awful heartbreak. The advice I keep getting is to date down -- get together with a man who is less attractive than I am and who likes me a little more than I like him. I was kind of into the idea of equality on all levels, but maybe I'm wrong.

--Rethinking Woman

After you've had your heart broken, it's tempting to opt for romantic safety measures. For example, a garden gnome could be an ideal partner -- because few women will fight you for your 18-inch "Man of Resin" and because his stubby little legs are molded together, making it impossible for him to run away. There's a name for this "dating down" thing you're contemplating: "the principle of least interest." This is sociologist Willard Waller's term -- from his observations of dating dynamics between college students -- describing how whichever partner is the least emotionally attached is in a position to "exploit" the other. Now, you aren't looking to clean out a guy's bank account or make him scrub the baseboards with Barbie's toothbrush. Regardless, you're likely to have more power in any relationship -- and be less likely to be the exploitee -- if your response to a guy's "I love you SO much!" involves polite gratitude or pointing skyward: "Look! A UFO!" The problem is, how do you engineer this sort of situation? Only "swiping right" on men you have the lukewarmies for? Only accepting dates from men you don't entirely respect? Of course, even an "I'm just not that into you" strategy like this isn't foolproof, because what anthropologists call "mate value" can shift -- like when the mouth-breathing nerdy loser becomes the mouth-breathing but unexpectedly sexy startup multigazillionaire. Tempting as it is to look for hacks to avoid heartbreak, it's probably more helpful to look at whether there was anything you could've -- and should've -- done differently in your past relationships. (Were there red flags you spotted and then dropped off at Goodwill with the weird tablecloth from your aunt?) Beyond any willful blindness on your part, the reality is, relationships sometimes end in heartbreak. It's just the price of getting together with a man you love and lust after -- as opposed to one you approached with "You know, I've always kinda pitied you and found you borderline sexually repellant. Whaddya say we get a beer?"