EVEN DURING MY INFATUATION with X Games, I might have seen that I was acting a bit eager.

I'd bake her desserts, ask if she wanted to go on a motorcycle ride, leave little "I miss you" notes made of twigs on her doormat—stuff I'd normally do. Just not all in one evening. When we took time to recreate apart, I'd slip away to ride bikes with the guys and she'd slip away... to ride bikes with the guys.

The tables turned when I met Cowgirl, an ebullient young woman who was fit from moonlighting as a circus trapeze artist but not too outdoorsy. We escaped to Telluride on Valentine's weekend so I could romance and—I now realize—scare the bejesus out of her.

After a snoozy morning of her favorite blue runs, I suggested (a couple of times) that we try a double black diamond. The couloir I was dying to ski started at 13,000 feet and gradually steepened until it couldn't hold snow. But instead of worrying her with the nasty bits, I focused on what tremendous fun she'd have. At the top I might have even said, "No, no, you'll do great."

Halfway down, she caught an edge, rag-dolled, and slid face first for a hundred yards before becoming entangled in a rope fence above a small rock band. I arrived to find her shaking and talking very softly. Once I gallantly rescued her, she quietly requested that I shut up.

Clearly, when faced with SDS, we men excel at finding the most deplorable course of action possible. What's more, we exhibit surprisingly bad manners while doing so.

A buddy of mine who's normally very patient remembers ditching an attractive woman in the middle of a skate-skiing weekend because she had, thanks to bone disease, a rod in her leg. "She wept when she couldn't catch on," he remembers. "‘Come on,' I said, ‘It's just a steel rod.' And I skied off, a true dick."

Of course, now more than ever, it's the men who are dusted. But, nonetheless, we still become surly. "When I first started mountain-biking, I had a lot of success early on. I loved it," says Jen, a real estate agent in Aspen. "The guy I was dating, a ski patroller, hated it. He wouldn't go on rides. He wouldn't cheer me on at races—he'd just no-show. I'd call later that night to tell him about it, and he'd be like, ‘Oh.'"