He's Just Not That Into You

Ok well, I just read “He’s Just Not That Into You” (HJNTIY) and I’m sure people will want me to report about it instead of having to read it themselves. The way it’s structured is that each chapter gives you one more way of telling that he’s just not that into you. E.g., he doesn’t call you, he doesn’t ask you out, he doesn’t want to have sex with you, and/or he’s married to someone else. After reading these I was able to discern that not only is no one into me now, but neither were most of the guys I thought were into me in the past. Kind of a downer. The author bases everything on the premise that his experience is the exemplar for everyone. You meet the woman of your dreams, you know it instantly, you love and dote on her, hang on her every word, meet all her expectations, call her five times a day, and reform the dickly ways of your youth. You ask her to marry you and live happily ever after. It has me wondering, what did his wife want? Does she love him, or does she, to quote the song, “love how you love me”? In describing himself, Greg Behrendt plays on the fantasy most women have grown up with, the doting loving husband, and the love at first sight thing. It’s what everyone wants, men and women, and if you think you don’t you’re lying to yourself. At some point he finally comes out and says “How many times do I have to repeat it? [though it’s the first time he has] Women cannot separate sex and love.” It’s the same old thing…women put up with putting out in order to get love. Apparently this is genetically programmed from the so-called caveman days. Men act on the evolutionary imperative to spread their genetic material to as many places as they can. It’s against their nature to get attached. Women on the other hand want to make sure that when they have babies they also have someone to bring home the mammoth so they can sit around and eat bonbons in the cave. It’s against their nature to work, so they have to make sure they can get someone else to do it for them by harnessing the male sexual urge. HJNTIY doesn’t say all this, don’t get me wrong, but it’s sort of the baseline for the discussion. Needless to say, I’ve never been a big fan of evolutionary psychology.

According to the book you must not ask a guy out or otherwise pursue him, because that will turn him off. Guys love a chase and they’re not going to want someone they know they can get. Well what about girls? It seems to me that the desire to chase men and to seek a challenge is one of the things that drives all these elaborate rationalizations in the first place. We hope we can solve the puzzle of why he didn’t call back. We hope we can get him to like us. It’s our chase and our desires that keep us fixating on someone who’s unresponsive. HJNTIY doesn’t allow for this possibility. They’re saying that what is driving women to fixate is a desire to recoup the emotional investment they’ve already made in a guy who’s being unresponsive. I totally identify with this. I’ve often whined to myself, “God…I have to make this one work, ‘cause where am I going to find another one? You mean I have to go out and get to know someone like this all over again?” I definitely get all Procrustean like that. “You’re going to fit in this bed if I have to cut your feet off, dammit!” Sometimes it’s not about recouping the investment. Sometimes it’s about “winning.” And we could all stand to take a step back and ask ourselves if it’s the guy (or girl) we really want, or it’s just the victory. By the same token, women being pursued sometimes need to look beyond the flattery and see whether they’re being chased for the chase’s sake.

What did I get out of the book? Well, that you shouldn’t have to struggle and fret and suffer and obsess quite so much. Eventually someone will come along who you love and you won’t have to make up elaborate explanations about. (This was repeated in a Saturn commercial I saw last night. The girl is saying, “I kept asking myself, ‘why doesn’t this feel right?’ And then I met Ben and finally it just feels right.” I was thinking it was a commercial for eHarmony, because she’s picking Ben up at the airport, and eHarmony tells people they should do a worldwide search in order to find their perfect match. But no, it’s a commercial for the car that’s like a perfect boyfriend.) What I’ve been getting lately out of dating advice is this sort of Buddhist scene, that you shouldn’t have to push and struggle too much in life. Say you like some guy who says he’s scared to be with you. This could mean exactly that, that he has issues. Or it could mean that he’s not interested and making up an excuse because he doesn’t want to come out and say he’s not interested. But it’s useless to keep guessing about it, because it amounts to the same thing: he doesn’t want to be with you right now. So move on with your life. If you’re putting all your energy into fussing and fixating about someone who’s mysterious and recalcitrant, you don’t have the energy to “be the best me you can be” or to let anyone else in to your heart.

All across America, women have read this book and decided to end their “better than nothing” relationships. They’ve ceased booty calls and breakup sex. HJNTIY has shattered illusions and left fewer women on the end of strings. I think they need a sequel about how they propose that we find and identify the guys who won’t string us along and be dicks. Because I for one am at a loss.