Crazy for Women Who Are, Too........

Men love to be heroes:

They love to "fix" things. It makes them feel needed, important, and feeds the male ego. Who makes a better damsel in distress than a poor, defenseless lunachic? Note to guys: a woman is not like a house. Fixer-uppers do not usually turn out to be a wise investment. If you need to fix something, there are plenty of us normal single girls out there who need some light bulbs changed.

He has mommy issues:

If a guy had a dysfunctional mother (or primary family member) he may not actually be aware that his lady's behavior is NOT normal. There's no shame in going to therapy and working that stuff out.

Why do men love crazy women?

No one ever asks that question. You hear a lot about all the bad men out there. A whole lamentation genre has grown up around smart women and their foolish choices, their misguided hunting and fishing for Mr. Right.

Lucinda Rosenfeld's recent first novel ''What She Saw . . . '' is a litany of exes, each chapter named for a different one. ''Kevin McFeeley, or, 'The Romantic From Ronkonkoma,' '' and so on. In ''Shutterbabe: Adventures in Love and War,'' Deborah Copaken Kogan recounts her experiences as a photojournalist in Afghanistan, Romania, Zimbabwe. Again, each chapter is named after a man. What she saw in Pascal, Pierre, Julian . . . Both books treat men like case studies in dysfunction.

''Sex and the City'' coined the term ''toxic bachelor'' to describe the many Mr. Wrongs bedded by the show's chronically single women. He is emotionally unavailable, unwilling to commit, unfaithful. But ask a man why a relationship has gone bad and he will very often cite just one reason. Twirling his index finger around his ear, he will lip-sync, if not actually come out and say, ''She was crazy.''

Crazy in the loose definition, that is. From just beyond garden-variety neurotic -- a tantrum at a Burberry sample sale isn't quite nutty enough -- to Zelda Fitzgerald. This is the mad, mad world of X-rated eye contact, flirtatious disclosures of kinky passions, mysterious disappearances in the middle of a party, searches for all-night pharmacies, rash proposals to move to Palestine, Tex.

Meet Ms. Wrong. These are the toxic bachelorettes and screwed-up sirens who have shipwrecked so many men on the shoals of their studio apartments. There is no self-help book called ''Smart Men, Crazy Choices,'' because no man would be seen buying it. The phenomenon is not listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. But psychologists I spoke with, male and female, instantly recognized it. As did any man with some baggage in his overhead compartment.

''I've always been attracted to crazy women, but I didn't marry one,'' said Adam Platt, a restaurant critic for New York magazine, who when he was single used to write columns for The New York Observer about his dating escapades. ''I would just chase them around and around,'' he said. ''High-energy, brainy, self-destructive women who came from tortured family situations. New York is a hotbed for that kind of character, because if you weren't crazy before you got here, you're certainly crazy after you've been dating a couple of years here.'' Including himself, he said, but not his wife. ''It's not like you're surrounded by pink-cheeked farm girls carrying buckets of milk around. You're surrounded by lunatics.''

Like addicts confessing for the first time to a lifelong habit, men offer tale after tale of seduction and disaster. The moth to this flame is, as often as not, the stable nice guy who seems inexorably drawn to women who should send him running for his life. The Angelinas, the Calistas and the many Kims (Kim Cattrall, Lil' Kim, Kimmi from ''Survivor,'

Men love to be heroes. They love to "fix" things. It makes them feel needed, important, and feeds the male ego. Who makes a better damsel in distress than a poor, defenseless lunachic? Note to guys: a woman is not like a house. Fixer-uppers do not usually turn out to be a wise investment. If you need to fix something, there are plenty of us normal single girls out there who need some light bulbs changed.