WASHINGTON — At the opening of "The Sweet Smell of Success" last month, a successful New York
guy I know took me aside for a lecture that was anything but sweet. He said he had wanted to ask me out
on a date when he was between marriages, but nixed the idea because my job made me too intimidating.

Men, he told me, prefer women who seem malleable and overawed. He said I would never find a mate, because if
there's one thing men fear, it's a woman who uses her critical faculties. Will she be critical of absolutely everything?

Now comes Time magazine with an equally distressing commentary. The cover story offers the scariest statistics
for women since Newsweek declared in 1986 that a 40-year-old woman was more likely to be killed by a
terrorist than to tie the knot.  Time chronicles the new baby bust — women who focus too much on their careers
suddenly realizing they've squandered their fertility.

Sylvia Ann Hewlett, an economist, conducted a survey and found that 55 percent of 35-year-old career women
are childless. Between a third and half of 40-year-old professional women are childless. The number of childless
women age 40 to 44 has doubled in the past 20 years. And among corporate executives who earn $100,000 or
more, she says, 49 percent of the women did not have children, compared with only 10 percent of the men.

Ms. Hewlett, the author of "Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children," observes, yet
again, that men have an unfair advantage.

"Nowadays," she says, "the rule of thumb seems to be that the more successful the woman, the less likely it is
she will find a husband or bear a child. For men, the reverse is true."

On a "60 Minutes" report on the book Sunday, Lesley Stahl talked to two young women who go to Harvard
Business School. They agreed that while they are the perfect age to start families, it was not so easy to find the
right mates.  Men, apparently, learn early to protect their eggshell egos from high-achieving women.

The girls said they hid the fact that they go to Harvard from guys they meet, because it's the kiss of death. "The
H-bomb," they call it.

"As soon as you say Harvard Business School . . . that's the end of the conversation," Ani Vartanian said. "As
soon as the guys say, 'Oh, I go to Harvard Business School,' all the girls start falling into them."
So the moral of the story is, the more women accomplish, the more they have to sacrifice?

The problem here is not only that women are procrastinating too long; it is that men veer away from
"challenging" women because they have an atavistic desire to be the superior force in a relationship.

In the immortal words of Cher: Snap out of it, guys.

Male logic on dating down is bollixed up: Women who seem in awe of you in the beginning won't stay in awe
once they get to know you. Women who don't have demanding jobs are not less demanding in relationships;
indeed, they may be more demanding. They're saving up all that competitive energy and critical faculty to lavish
on you when you get home.

If men would only give up their silly desire for world dominance, the world would be a much finer place.
Look at the Taliban. Look at the Vatican. Now, look at the bonobo. Bonobos, or pygmy chimpanzees,
live in the equatorial rain forests of Congo, and have an extraordinarily happy existence.

And why? Because in bonobo society, the females are dominant. Just light dominance, so that it is more like a
co-dominance, or equality between the sexes.

"They are less obsessed with power and status than their chimpanzee cousins, and more consumed with Eros,"
The Times's Natalie Angier has written. "Bonobos use sex to appease, to bond, to make up after a fight, to ease
tensions, to cement alliances. Humans generally wait until after a nice meal to make love; bonobos do it beforehand."

The males were happy to give up a little dominance once they realized the deal they were being offered: all those
aggressive female primates, after a busy day of dominating their jungle, were primed for sex, not for the withholding of it.

There's no battle of the sexes in bonoboland. And there's no baby bust.