So what?

A few years ago - maybe ten, who really knows - there was a craze that swept the nation via a little show called Sex and the City. No, I’m not talking about cupcakes or Cosmos. I’m talking about a phrase: “He’s just not that into you.”

Then the writer/contributor, Greg Behrendt, who came up with the concept wrote a book solely devoted to what that one phrase means. And once again, the phenomenon swept the nation. Women were supposedly revolutionizing the way they think about men. Greg got his own syndicated talk show for God’s sake.

And finally the phrase inspired a movie. The movie pretty much turned the entire concept on its head, telling women at once that they aren’t the exception to the rule, and yet displayed some sixteen famous beauties that were. But still, the phrase was in the national consciousness.

They say “He’s just not that into you.” I say, so what?

Greg Behrendt wrote the book from a man’s perspective thinking he was saving us time and effort. But what he didn’t consider is WHY women make excuses for the men we obsess over.

At the end of the day, what makes you feel better? Thinking he didn’t call because he’s stuck at work, or thinking he didn’t call because he’s just not that into you? Feels like a logical conclusion to me. Greg might think that he’s saving me time by telling me the man doesn’t like me, but what about my delicate female feelings? They want to believe that there was an elevator malfunction that kept him away from cell service.

Men will move on from a failed relationship because it’s over. Women won’t truly move on until they find someone else. The last man you were with is always in the back of your mind, ripe for comparison to every new guy you meet. Therefore, the theory that bluntness is saving me time is a moot point. I’m not going to move on until I’m good and ready anyway, so what’s the point?

The goal, of course, is to find a PERSON that makes excuses a moot point, and not just a theory. But until then, I’ve decided to use my blogger creativity to create fun excuses. For the man I’m currently hung up on, I have a variety of options:

1. He has a secret girlfriend.
2. He’s scared of having something real.
3. He has a condition that precludes him from intimacy.
4. His mother wrote in her will that he can’t date anyone named Blair.
5. We’re in a Nicolas Sparks novel and he has a rare disease that he’ll die from in just a few months and he doesn’t want to hurt me more by getting close to me.

I can pick any one of those excuses on any given day. At the end of the day, he may not be that into me, but fake diseases and conditions are just more comforting.