Although plenty of ladies swoon over Bruening, the actor still gets nervous over attention from the opposite sex. "I'm worthless with women," he insists. "I can't even talk to girls; I get too nervous. I become friends with them because that's the only way I can have them around me. Once we're friends they're like, 'Wow, you're a different person -- you've stopped twitching around me!' "

Bruening remembers a few years back, when his uncle told him that girls would stare at him at the gym where he worked out. "I was like, 'All right, buddy. Whatever.' He said, 'How do you not see that?' And I was like, 'Because I can't see very well!' I didn't get contacts until I moved to California [after college] and I hated wearing my glasses, hated having things on my face, so I just wouldn't wear them. He was like, 'What do you mean, you can't see?' So, I explained it to him and I got contacts. It was hilarious because I put them in -- and I'm not trying to sound conceited, I'm just being completely honest -- it freaked me out [to finally be able to see for himself what his uncle had described]. I couldn't wear them to the gym. I would take them out before I went to the gym. I didn't like people staring at me. It was weird. To this day, if someone says I'm cute, I turn bright red."

Digest tested him by telling him how many of our staffers think that he is adorable, and indeed, he turned bright red. He struggles for words to describe this response. "The first half of my life, I was a dork. I was 5-feet-1, 100 pounds. I looked like a girl; I had the feminine-feature thing going. I had one girlfriend when I was a junior [in high school]; that didn't work out. So, then I go to college and I grow. The first half of my life I was a dork and no girls would talk to me. Then, I go to college and I grow and I'm 6-feet-3, 200 pounds. Women still wouldn't talk to me. The weirdest damn thing! It baffled me. I said to my friend Karen, 'I don't get it.' She said, 'Women are intimidated by you.' I was like, 'What? Before I was intimidated by them! Now, they're intimidated by me? I'm never gonna get a girlfriend!' The first girl who showed interest in me in college, I thought there was something wrong with her. I was like, 'Why is she staring at me? Is that girl mad at me?' My friend Brian went, 'Dude, she's checking you out!' And then he said, 'Uh-oh -- you have ugly duckling syndrome, don't you? You were ugly for so long that you don't realize you're pretty now!' "

Now, when girls hit on him, is Bruening secretly thinking, "You never would have talked to me in high school"? "I totally think that," he admits. "I've even said that to a couple of girlfriends: 'You wouldn't have even looked at me.' They all say, 'I would have!' And I say, 'No, you wouldn't have. I guarantee it.' It was the last-pick-for-kickball kind of thing. Girls would date my friends and then realize I had a great personality. But I would be like, 'Get away from me.' "

"This is going to make every girl who reads this want to take care of you," Digest warns Bruening. "That's okay," he grins. "That's great!"