Help, I'm suffering the Miranda complex

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And I am afraid to report that even here, we seem to be as similarly unenlightened. I have an attractive, single female friend who is a merchant banker on a six-figure salary. She tells me she can barely get a date. I tried to set her up with our fortysomething, eligible next-door neighbour, who seemed interested in the idea - until I told him what she did and how much she was paid.

"Oh God," he said, rolling his eyes. "Not another career-obsessed, ball-busting late-thirtysomething." It turns out he wants a home-dwelling type, barefoot in the kitchen having babies, not someone who's bringing in the bacon.

Conversely, I know a fortysomething single woman who has earned a pile as an IT consultant. She tells me she pretends to be less successful than she is to find a Mr Big. She even admits to simpering. " Flattery," she sighs. "It's the only thing that works. I say, 'Ooh, clever you to earn so much money and have such an important job.' Men love it."

What on earth is happening here? Have we all regressed to the cave? It had never occurred to me that a woman's earning power could be seen by males as being a negative attribute. I have always earned my own money. It never occurred to me not to. My financial independence has never threatened any of my relationships - and neither, now, has the fact that I make more money than my husband.

Yet, when we go out, the credit-card machine is always passed to him, even though it is me who is paying. At hotels they check him out even though the room was booked in my name. Workmen discuss quotes with him, salesmen direct all conversations to him, and the garage mechanic can barely look me in the eye when I get out my chequebook.

And this is the unfairest part of the Miranda complex. Even if you don't suffer from it yourself, even if you and your partner are far too enlightened to let your relative wealth bother you, the waiters and plumbers will still assume you live by such rules. We all have the Miranda complex, whether we like it or not.