That date was just the first in a series of self-degrading blunders I would make during our short romance. I did not play hard to get. I showed my cards too early. In our game of communication chicken, I was always first to cave: He would tell me he was looking forward to our next date, then counter it with a week of silence, until I would be the one to ask if we were still on.

My M.B.A. guy and I never officially broke up, but two hours before we were supposed to meet at a museum on Valentine’s Day, he texted to say he unexpectedly had to entertain a vendor. Even if his excuses were real, he did not offer to reschedule.

Looking back, I wonder why I stuck around, only to let myself be devalued. I went out with him when I was at a low. With the end of my previous relationship I had lost confidence in my worth as a romantic partner, and I was lonely, scared and grateful. I believed I had nothing concrete to offer, whereas I was in awe of his paper achievements.

They say you sometimes project the qualities you lack onto a romantic partner. I began to fetishize those with economic prowess, as though they represented everything I was not.

My sister, who is not an economist but, as an orthodontist who pushes wayward teeth into systematic order, may be the next best thing, would remind me I had the kind of artsy, whimsical brain better suited for language and literature than math and science. She’d sway her arms in an imitation of the flower child she must have thought I was.

But the Korean families I grew up with didn’t tend to value the humanities the way they did math and science. You were expected to choose a profession that predictably delivered returns on your investment. To my parents’ credit, they supported my pursuit of literature, but my family didn’t understand the literary work I did, just as they couldn’t get why I was unable to wrap my mind around the simplest of “left brain” principles.