‘I’ll leave her homeless; she’s …

But within minutes, Ryan had steered the conversation from business to personal. He wanted to know about my background, my family, my goals. He was charming.

Attentive. And he made me feel like I was the most interesting person in the world. “You’re not what I expected,” he said about halfway through our coffee.

“Most successful women I meet are so focused on work that they forget to actually live.”

Ladies, if a man ever tells you that successful women forget to live, what he is really saying is that he is intimidated by your independence and would prefer you to be more dependent. But at the time, somehow, he made it sound like a compliment. The business project never materialized.