I can crush a man’s heart with my hands. Women do it with a sentence.

As a karate black belt, it’s true that I can kill a man with my bare hands. Not once, however, have I been forced to plunge my FBI-registered hands into a man’s chest and pull out his beating heart as he realized in astonishment that he had finally messed with the wrong guy. No, I use karate to avoid danger and stay the hell outta people’s way.

It’s also true that my martial arts skills are no match when it comes to dating women, who have developed the far more potent marital arts skills. The main difference between martial arts and marital arts is that women have a lifetime of training and practice in the art of crushing a man’s heart, without the messiness of physically extracting it from the guy’s chest.  I can break several boards with a kick. Big deal. A woman can knock a man off a fence with one sentence. I’ll explain:

My future fiancé, who later became my ex-wife, decided it was time to knock me off the fence, relationship-wise. We had found ourselves living a thousand miles apart while I ran a city magazine in Florida and she finished her college degree in Texas. One weekend, she came out for a visit – and for what turned out to be The Talk. You know what I mean: Where is all this going? What is our future? Should I stay or should I go?

I was not prepared, like a boxer who gets in the ring not understanding that this Cassius Clay guy is not just pretty; he is deadly. We went out to dinner and talked. She floated like a butterfly, alighting gently, as we enjoyed our seafood and imported beer. She was readying her sting, I now I realize. The evening out at a nice restaurant was orchestrated to break me down, pressure me into admitting my feelings, and push me off the fence into her awaiting trap. I mean, arms.

“I need to tell you something,” she said, suddenly serious. Vaguely aware that we were entering The Talk mode, I felt the first jab connect. It didn’t knock the wind out of me, but it woke me up. I sensed a seismic shift in power. I plucked the shrimp tail out of my mouth and chewed like a cow. She looked right at me, sort of like a doctor who is giving you a few weeks to live. “My art professor wants to go out with me.” Ow! Another jab.

“Well, what did you tell him?” I stammered, up against the ropes, trying to guard against her next strike. But she had me right where she wanted me as she delivered a mind-blowing uppercut. “I’m thinking about it,” she said. Bam! Black Belt down. Guys are all about physically crushing their opponents. True, they can also do it with words. The pen is, indeed, mightier than the sword. But girls, who turn into women, learn how to wield emotion like a flame-thrower, scorching anything in its path. This apparently is not news to women. In fact, women are the ones who tell me that women are well aware they possess this superpower. Guys just recoil in awe.

In my testosterone-addled warrior’s mind, the enemy was suddenly confused. Was the perpetrator of my gut-wrenching dilemma the professor or Mary Ann, I mean, my fiancé? I didn’t know what to do. I was speechless. Knockout. Less than a year later, after the wedding, my wife joked that she “broke me like a horse.” Nice. More like an ass.

Relationships are all about the balance of Power. Money equals Power. Sex equals Power. Making a decision equals Power. And my decision in the restaurant that innocent evening was to declare my undying love and please move to Florida and we’ll get married and, well, I forget what else I blubbered. All right, I might have cried a little or maybe even a lot, but I also had a terrible head cold, okay? I was playing hurt. A martial artist wouldn’t even have stepped into the ring in my condition.

The next day, exhausted, still sniffling, and reeling from The Talk, I drove my newly minted fiance to the airport amid her buzz about packing and moving. I never heard about the professor again.

I’m not even certain there was a professor.