Book Review - He's Just Not That Into You

Lately I've been hearing rather a lot about that best-selling explanatory tome on romantic relationships 'He's Just Not That Into You', written by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo, the pens behind the TV serial 'Sex and the City'. I didn't think too much of that show and I can't understand what all the excitement is about regarding this book. Why is it being treated like it might be the biggest revelation of the Millennium? Why are so many people taking a page from Miranda's book? Miranda, of course, is the character that inspired it in the first place. She went on a no-score date and needed to be told later that it was because she didn't personally appeal to the chap. It didn't occur to her on her own. I suppose she was too busy preening herself in her own mind all evening to notice the lack of admiring enthusiasm from her companion. Well, now that she had been told, she cheered up. She said, "It's the most liberating thing I have ever heard. Think of all the time and therapy I could have saved over the last 20 years if I had known this." Well, that is the most asinine thing I've ever heard. We already have every kind of expert under the sun informing us on every damn aspect of our life, and that wasn't enough, I guess - striving dumb chucks that we are in the fashion of the aforementioned Miranda, we needed the additional thrill of requiring the experts to tell us when someone's 'just not that' into us. So along came this galling new piece of pop psychology on a spankier carpet of publicity.

I'm trying without much success to understand why anyone would part with hard-earned cash to be the proud owner of this bestiary. It has, according to the publicity blitz, 'helped millions of women end bad relationships or stop pining over uninterested men'. That's good new and bad news. Good news for the uninterested men who wanted the pining women out of their hair anyway, and bad news for the millions of women - I mean, to have bad relationships, uninterested men, and now a book that underlines the space in the top story - how unlucky can you get?

Are people these days really so deficient in sensing and understanding and relating to other human beings? Well, I suppose they always were and that at least should be no revelation. So then it's all the more imperative that they chuck reading such stuff and start getting out a bit more. Nothing like first-hand experimentation on the individual level when it comes to relating and reaching out to others. Men are human beings, you know, not ciphers to be figured out on a mass scale. There's no such general thing as 'a real guy's perspective', there's a person's perspective, depending on a given set of circumstances, a mutual chemistry, and some old-fashioned decency. People should be treated with respect, not as objects for your personal gratification. You can kiss a lot of frogs in the fond hope that one might turn into a Prince, if you're inclined that way, but you don't have to go around informing them they are frogs, you know - that's not good form. And, of course, it's even worse form to be taken for a practice dummy yourself, and only a practice dummy can't figure that out for herself.

I also wouldn't set store too much by commandments like a) I will not go out with a man who hasn't asked me out first. b) I will not go out with a man who keeps me waiting by the phone c) I will not go out with a man who isn't sure he wants to date me. Because - a) You're not the only shrinking violet of the species, and here too may be an emancipated guy who's determined not to go out with a woman who hasn't asked him out first. b) First of all no one keeps you waiting by the phone, that's your own lunatic choice. Take responsibility. Conscious responsibility, I mean, don't hide behind a 'brain malfunction'. And then remember that modern technology does go kaput from time to time. c) Okay, who's forcing you?

I would however take to heart Behrendt's admonitions of 'get your head out of the cloud' and 'don't waste the pretty' and would slightly amend another admonition to fit my shoe size, "Hey Hot Stuff, Can't wait till you get over that guy you were reading. He sounds like a real jerk. Hope it's soon. You're way too tasty to be alone for too long with such taradiddle. Come and find me, I'm out here waiting. Your Future."