Dear E. Jean: How can we—I'm including most of my girlfriends in this question­—be powerful, successful women and date not-as-successful men? Is it possible to maintain our femininity and earn more money than men and somehow not emasculate them? My girlfriends and I are struggling with this. I think I just lost the love of my life because I can't find the key to this mystery! I'm working on getting him back, but I need your help!—Lonely at the Top

Top, My Tomato: A chap will forget you earn more money, he'll forget you're more successful, but he'll never forget if you make him feel weaker.

You've had the "key to this mystery" since you bossed around your dad at the age of two and a half and demanded he read you a fairy tale. The knight saves the princess, the prince slays the dragon, the champion storms the castle and rescues the lady.

If you make a man feel good about himself, he'll never leave. And how do you make him feel good? He grew up dreaming of rescuing a princess from an alien planet. Make him your knight, and you can be as "powerful" and "successful" as you please. Just remember one rule: Don't fool with the fairy tale.

P.S. Hate to bring up Catherine the Great again, but damn. Wow. The chick was the most powerful female on earth. And yet, according to her exceptionally juicy letters to her 12 lovers (five of whom she loved desperately, and none of whom was a horse), she made the chaps feel like her rescuers in the fairy tales. At times she literally addressed them as "Sir Knight"!

This letter is from the Ask E. Jean Archive, 1993-2017. Send questions to E. Jean at E.Jean@AskEJean.com.

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E. Jean

I write the ASK E. JEAN column in ELLE magazine.  Incredibly it's the longest, currently-running advice column in American publishing. I live in a little cabin on an island (it's about the size of a mattress) in upstate New York. I used to write for Saturday Night Live and was a contributing editor to Esquire and Outside. I have noticed one thing about writing: when I get stuck I find that walking into the kitchen sixty or seventy times to eat something really helps.