I think I've pretty much decided that chocolate is God's way of reminding men how inadequate they are. I am vividly confronted with this fact every time my wife and I go out to a restaurant. When it gets to dessert, my wife usually orders the most chocolate-saturated dessert possible: It's the one called "Unstoppable Double-Fudge Chocolate Mudslide Explosion" or some such thing. I always wonder why anyone would want to eat anything that promises a catastrophic natural disaster in your mouth.

The dark brown monstrosity arrives at the table, and my wife takes the first bite. Before the fork is even removed from her mouth, a small moan escapes her lips. Her eyes, previously perfectly aligned, first cross slightly and then faze completely, pupils dilating in pure chocolate pleasure before the eyelids clamp down in ecstasy. The hand not holding the fork clenches into a fist and starts pounding the table. The silverware rattles. After about six minutes of this, she finally manages to swallow the bite, realign her eyes, and take the next shuttle back from whatever transcendental plane she's been visiting. Slowly, her sphere of consciousness expands to include me, her husband, her lifelong mate, her presumed partner in all things ecstatic. "Hey, this is pretty good," she'll say. "You want some?"

No, I don't. I want nothing to do with an object that does to my wife in one bite what I've worked for an entire relationship to achieve. It wouldn't do any good, anyway. Men just don't have the same relationship with chocolate that women do. It's not even close. I wandered around the office today and asked men — "Chocolate. Your thoughts?" — and the result was always the same. First, a confused look as to why they're being asked about something so trivial, and then some lame, obvious statement: "Ooh... it's uh... brown?"

Ask women the same question, and you get responses like "The ONLY food group!", "ESSENTIAL to life as we know it," and the ultimate casual swipe at every member of the Y-chromosome brigade, "Better than sex!"   Ouch.

Some women will try to make up for that last one by quickly adding that chocolate is supposed to be an aphrodisiac. Uh-huh. Chocolate certainly increases desire; problem is the desire is usually for more chocolate. The best a guy can do is buy a box of chocolates and hope he'll be considered somewhere between the cherry truffle and the strawberry nougat...

We had made some changes in our lives. My husband had lost 50 pounds by low carbing, and after eight years of being a housewife, I had taken a job in a restaurant. When I returned home after my first day at work, I gave my husband a big hug. He seemed to cling to me longer than usual. "Did you really miss me that much today, dear?" I asked. "No," came the reply. "But you smell so much like pancakes that I hate to let you go."

I noticed my husband standing on the bathroom scale, sucking in his ample stomach.

Thinking he was trying to weigh less with this maneuver, I quipped, "I don't think that is going to help much."

"Sure it does," he said. "How else can I can see the numbers?"