Having once seriously dated a fantastic, and fantastically ugly, guy, I have developed the following fugly-guy philosophy: You have to feel in your lusty places that your man is, like, the hottest guy in the world. In your head, however, you may acknowledge that he is perhaps the hottest guy in the world only according to you.

A recent study about the relative physical attractiveness of spouses seems, at first glance, to bolster my theory, stating that hot-wife/not-so-hot hubby couples often feature the most mutual encouragement and support.

But what a buzzkill to see the same hieroglyphic-era logic trotted out as the reason why, that men value physical beauty, while women prioritize emotional support. So men pick partners from the top down, starting with looks and then seeing what’s underneath, whereas women — well, to quote an old Janeane Garofalo bit that’s stayed in my head, “If we like the guy, we’re tolerant.” (She then references the marriages of Stephen Hawking, Chang and Eng, and “the Shine guy” as proof.)

The study also says that, in couples with conventionally hotter men, those men tended to exhibit a “that’s your problem” mentality, possibly fueled by the subconscious notion that they could do better with someone else.

As I have also seriously dated a truly beautiful man — I mean, straight male friends used to tell me how handsome he was — this assertion stopped me cold. Was that why he never wanted to spend holidays with my parents/pick up cat food for me/see a couples therapist? With cheekbones so high and eyes so blue, was he biologically unable to do so?