At about nine years old, I learned, based on a very strained relationship with my father, various episodes of Sex and the City, and the conversations I overheard between my mother and her friends over glasses of wine, that there was nothing a man could give me that I couldn’t give myself. This knowledge is what I thank for my lack of screw ups commonly made by a stupid, teenage girl. What’s funny about mistakes is that people rarely learn from them. This is why, when I look around, I am sickened by the future I see for the beautiful young women around me. One will grow up to end each relationship with a pint of Ben and Jerry’s and a carton of frosting. Another will get pregnant at 19, and marry a guy whose idea of affection is slapping her on the ass when he needs another beer. A different one will spend thousands of dollars to ask a therapist that never ending question, “Why doesn’t he love me?” To which her therapist will reply, “Well, perhaps the 17 voice messages you left him of you crying didn’t really help your relationship.”

All three of these scenarios have one major thing in common. These women will look all their lives for the men they chose to give them something, something that they can, and can only, give themselves. What is this something? Well for some it could be attention, strength, confidence, or security. However, these are all simply byproducts from what it is they truly desire, love. Not particularly romantic love, although this is an unfortunate fantasy that is somehow programmed in our genetic makeup, no, the love I am referring to in this case, is the love of self. A woman who lacks a love of self, will find it in anyway she can. In most cases, in the, sometimes restraining, arms of a man.

Now, there are women who suffer an opposite reaction than those girls in cowboy hats dancing on tables at bars. These are the women who are often proud, educated, with a number of close girlfriends and a lovely nose often pointed in the air. They will probably tell you, if you happen to ask about their childhood, about their non present fathers, their four drunken uncles, or a boyfriend of their mother who sucked out her intelligence through a bendy straw. I like to call these ladies, the man haters; Women who are afraid of ever being vulnerable to a man, and might go to jail one day for tazing one.

So, the two common options for a woman are as follows: be 50, in a tube top, making a sandwich for an illiterate with a beer belly, or live alone with 10 cats, watching re runs of Friends and saying to herself that she would be married if more guys in the world were like Ross. No, I refuse. I am a firm believer in the possibility of a third option. An option where a woman can be opinionated and strong, without being bitter, selfless without having to lose herself, intelligent without being condescending, and confident without being snobby. Remarkably, there is such a thing as a balanced woman, though due to overhunting and habitat loss, they are slowly becoming extinct.

What is the secret to resurrecting this breed of women? Well, it is as simple as it is extraordinarily difficult. One must love herself. Thoroughly and unconditionally love herself. I am not talking about becoming a female Narcissus, but loving oneself as one would a best friend, as an ally, a support system, and a person deserving of respect. After years of being made to feel insignificant, changing what we have been conditioned to think is hard. However, it is wonderfully possible. The beauty of it is, everything one could ever need, resides in them already, even the strength to change. Because there is nothing a man could give you that you could not give yourself. In fact, there is nothing in this world that anyone anywhere could give you that you could not give yourself.