I'm sorry, but this letter sounds like it was written by some teenage guy. "She" is 31 yet still uses offensive words like "retard" like a 12-year-old? I'm not buying it.

I've never heard any female talk like this, at least one that was old enough to vote.

Have you tried dating someone smarter, as smart as you? Someone you like? Oh wait, you don't like yourself...so you might have trouble liking someone else. Hence the emphasis on looks.

You definitely have a problem...good luck.

You can't be nearly as pretty as your friends lead you to believe. The typical straight male will put in the work for 2-3 dates to bang a hot chick no matter what her personality. It doesn't speak well for my gender, but there it is.

If you're driving them away after a single date, there's no way you're "really pretty." No one's personality is that bad.

O.K. ma'am, here is what you do.

Forget about yourself feeling insecure and concentrate on making HIM feel good. Men are people too, they are not just penises with bodies attached (even if they act that way sometimes).

Tell him that he is good-looking (men are insecure too)and if he is at all polite, he will return the compliment and you are off to the races. You can be indirect about this if you like. A good-looking guy like you must get a lot of dates?

DO NOT try to impress him with witty talk or intelligence. Make the conversation about him--where he grew up, his family, his favorite animal or something. Keep it basic.

ASSUME he is going to sleep with you, but only at a time and place of YOUR choosing. Are you doing anything Saturday evening? Would you like to come over to my place and watch Saturday Night Live and stay the night?

Imagine the irony...

I find it so hard to look at and let alone talk to stunningly beautiful women. I am 48!

I am intelligence and am told that I'm good looking and yet I nearly seaze when talking or even walking by stunning women. I did just, on a self dare, watch a particularly stunning woman walk by me in the market. I felt somehow exhilerated and yet ethereal...

God but I am a weirdo... Or so I thought...

I shudder to think how much my inferiority complex has, and continues to negatively impact my life.

The worse that they can do is say no but somehow that's the worst thing that could ever happen.

What made things rather odd was the moment that every man dreads: the moment when they are invisible to younger women. For me is happened when I turned something close to 35. A stunning woman walked up to me waving and smiling and looking RIGHT AT ME and she walked right past me, looking through me like I wasn't there. Heck, I wasn't that close to her father's age... Yet... ;-)

I wonder how I got this complex and if it will be beaten and left in the basement forever.

I could have written this letter. It's a serious issue that has hindered my ability to be in a real relationship. I can't speak for the LW, but I'm not trying to date Brad Pitt. Just men I find attractive -- and I like 'em quirky and adorkable. When I'm not attracted to the guy, I'm blandly polite and a little aloof and the guy is inevitably all over to me. But when I'm into a guy, I talk too loud, I get nervous, and the object of my affection always thinks of me as the sweet but socially awkward sister he never had -- a sister who he would never, ever, even if I showed up at his house clad only in saran wrap, find attractive. (And, for the record, I am neither overweight nor hideous looking.) It sucks. It's a highly specific form of social anxiety that I'd like to cure before it becomes too late for me to have a child. I've tried therapy. It didn't work.

So I was thrilled to read this letter in the hopes that I'd finally get some much-needed advice. Instead, Cary gives one of his joke answers because he thinks shyness is hilarious and that life is like an indie movie where men find socially awkward behavior funny and charming, when they would in fact rightfully run in the other direction if any woman actually tried it.

Speaking from personal experience, mentally rehearsing social situations works for something where there's little emotional stake, like introducing yourself to people at a party. But when it comes to dating, the sting of rejection and the accompanying plunge in self-esteem that it creates, tends to get in the way.

I hope someone whose been through this and come out the other side will give a real answer to this question. Not all of us charming alcoholics like you, Cary!

There is help available for this kind of anxiety. Seek it out.

Cary, I love you, but your response was useless.

I laughed my ass off at this letter for the best of possible reasons. I am the exact same way around beautiful women.

Well, not all beautiful women. I am totally comfortable with beautiful women who are married, beautiful women who are dating good friends of mine, beautiful women who are too young for me, beautiful women who for one reason or another I don't have a chance with.

Beautiful, single, available women? I can't string a coherent sentence together.

It's not that I'm unattractive. (My mom says I'm handsome.)

On rare occasions I've done okay with quite attractive women, but there's unusual circumstances involved - Halloween costume party, Caribbean beaches - things that distract from the everyday existence. But when it's just me in a place I consider "normal" and I'm in my normal groove, I'm a freaking idiot when a beautiful women comes near.

The most unbelievable: I chatted well and had an awesome time with a fantastically gorgeous woman when I was freshly arrived to a new town with a new job and was feeling on top of the world. We were looking forward to seeing each other again after she got back from a vacation trip. She was gone for a month and when she got back, I was so nervous around her I made stupid, stupid gaffes again and again. Never sorted it out and eventually looked elsewhere.

Solution? Well, mine has been to escape the comfort zone and be somewhere so weird that I forget that I'm me. But for everyday life, I'm not sure. Alcohol to lower inhibitions, I guess.

Um, as for the cue cards, I dunno. Maybe if the other person is a fan of John Cusack romantic comedies. Otherwise, I can't see it.