LOL @ CAPITALISM

What It's Like to Date a Hotshot

WHAT IT'S LIKE TO DATE A HOTSHOT
COSMOPOLITAN
JULY 2006
BY JULIA ALLISON

Congressmen in Washington are like movie stars in Hollywood.  They’re everywhere, they’re always shorter in person – and yet, everyone is still totally impressed.

As a government major at Georgetown, I was a shameless political groupie.  I tracked the rarest of species in our nation’s capitol – the young, unmarried, good-looking politician.  Actually, I only found one.  The year before, he was one of People’s 50 Most Beautiful People.  Like a teenager with a crush on Brad Pitt, I taped the photo to my desk, where it stayed (embarrassingly) for 8 months.

Of course, I never expected to actually meet him.

But one evening, out to dinner, I spied him at the table next to mine and courageously introduced myself.  I was 21; he was turning 32 that evening.  A junior in college, I had never dated a guy older than 24, let alone one with such a formidable resume: Ivy League school, law degree, a prestigious political family, and – oh yeah – an office on Capitol Hill with 20 staff members.

I didn’t realize it then, but I had already fallen into the insidious “he’s better than me” trap – by putting him on a pedestal, I was unconsciously telling myself that I wasn’t worthy.  In the coming months I would realize how misguided this mindset was.

Our five-minute intro turned into an entire evening of flirting as he invited me along with as he celebrated his birthday.  We went from the restaurant to a swanky hotel bar, where he asked for a birthday kiss – and I practically fainted from excitement.

When he said goodnight late that evening, it never occurred to me he would call again.  But I was wrong; he called the next week, and the week after.  

In retrospect, I’m not sure why I was so surprised – as the dating columnist for The Georgetown Hoya, I knew a thing or two on how to keep a man’s interest.  Or at least, a college guy’s interest!  But one of the most eligible bachelors in DC?  I really believed I was in over my head.

The concept of him being interested in me was so shocking that my normally healthy self-esteem couldn’t get to my brain!

Unnerved by talking with him on the phone, I would prepare little “cheat sheets” so I wouldn’t blank on conversation topics.  (Who does that??)  I would compare myself constantly to him: He makes six figures, I get an allowance.  He meets with world leaders, I stopped by my professor’s office yesterday.

Again and again, I fell short in my own mind.  Of course, I’m not the only woman to find herself involved with a man who she views – either consciously or unconsciously – as “superior” to herself.  He doesn’t have to be a movie star; I’ve watched beautiful, confident girls reduced to awkward, desperate messes wondering why their boyfriends – the star of the basketball team or a rich doctor or anyone else who generally intimidates them – would ever want them.

I was pretty far along that road when he asked me on a weekend ski vacation.  I lost five pounds, bought a new pink ski suit and compulsively planned out every outfit.  Then we got there – and … he couldn’t ski.  Not sort of couldn’t ski, but god awful, I-hope-he-doesn’t-break-his-leg couldn’t ski.

Out there on the slopes, he wasn’t a hotshot politician, he was just a guy.  A guy with no coordination.  Later, watching C-Span together (although I’d really rather watch Oprah), he got the Kuwaiti ambassador’s name wrong – and I corrected him!  Suddenly, I began to see beyond the image to the real person, who wasn’t so intimidating after all.

And when I took the big man OFF campus, I realized that I … well, I just wasn’t that into him.  Sure, it was an ego boost to date a prominent A-Lister.  But beyond that, we didn’t have much in common.

The irony didn’t escape me.  All this time I had been building him up in my mind and underestimating my own qualities, forgetting that no one can be in a good relationship with an idol – it has to be equal.  And if you don’t have self-respect, how can he respect you?

The whole thing made me laugh.  After all, I had asked myself so many times, “Why does he want to be with me?”  when I should have been asking “Why do I want to be with him?”