Attention eligible bachelors: Sabina Ptacin would like to meet you. She's the owner of two successful companies and is energetic and sociable.
She looks a bit like the actress Kate Winslet, with green eyes and sandy blonde hair. There's only one problem: She spends so much time working, she breaks more dates than she keeps. "I'm not going to marry either one of my jobs," admits Ptacin, who nevertheless often puts in 100-hour workweeks.
Loretta Talbot, a senior project manager at Wyeth ( WYE - news - people ), the pharmaceutical giant, wants a relationship too. She has a zest for life and enjoys photography and sailing. But it's not a sure thing that a man will call for a second date once he finds out how much real estate she owns.
Finding one's soul mate is never easy. But for women who are pursuing influential careers--women like Ptacin, Talbot, even Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor--the course of true love can be especially tricky. It's not just a matter of trying to find the time to date when you're working around the clock. Women face far more complex hurdles. Unlike their male counterparts, who generally become more desirable in the romance arena as they achieve higher career status, powerful women are often handicapped by their success.
And antiquated social mores still dictate that no matter how commanding a woman is at work, she should let her date choose the wine in a dimly lit restaurant.
"Successful men are viewed as highly desirable for women, but successful women are viewed as really scary by men," says Patricia Cook, who runs a boutique executive recruiting firm and has worked with hundreds of senior level executive men and women. "A man needs to be confident and secure in himself in order to be with a woman who earns more than he does."
