The first time a man talks about meeting his wife, he almost always … always? says, “She was so beautiful.”

The first thing. The most important thing about women, it always seems, is our looks.

Never, “she told a joke, and it was so funny I laughed until I had tears running down my face, and that’s when I knew I wanted to marry her.”

Never, “she presented the most elegant explanation of why the fluid flow should behave that way, and I knew I was in love.”

Never, “She broke the stack of three boards with a flying side-kick on the first try. I had to go meet her.”

Never, “I heard her reading a poem that she wrote, and I was entranced.”

Never, “She was so kind to me when I first arrived …”

Do we women talk about men the same way? I know I have dated men who, on first (and even second) appraisal, were not particularly attractive, though they grew to be attractive to me because I cared about them. And while sometimes, yes, it is looks that get us interested, often it is something else, something more meaningful about him that makes us first want to know more or fall in love. Or so I think. Am I wrong?

And how many times have we had a lover tell us that if only we were prettier, then they’d love us more/want to marry us?

I swear if a man ever dares say that to me again, I am going to throw him out of my life so hard he bounces on the way out.

Why is it always the first thing we care about with women is the way they look? Aren’t we capable of anything deeper?

I want to tell the young women in my life that, “You are so much more than that.” But there are days when I am afraid that to the external world, it just isn’t so.

Is it any different in the LGBT community?

Will it ever be better in society in general?