"Not That Into You" chapter 12 & 13 notes

On we go with the series of braindump posts. Same rules apply.

Doing 2 chapters here because they're shorter than previous ones.

N.B. common abbreviations used:

G.B. = Greg Behrendt (author)
L.T. = Liz Tuccillo (author)

Chapter 12: Don't listen to these stories.

Sure, stories exist of guy being pursued and it works out; the jerk who ends up being a good husband & father; married man having an affair ends up leaving his wife and marrying the girlfriend instead.

"These stories are the exceptions to the rule. Thinking of yourself as the exception is what got you into this mess in the first place."

But how many exceptions does it take for the rule not to be a rule? Again, returning to the whole "don't ask him out, he has to ask you" "rule" that G.B. repeats here: what if it's 20% of men prefer to be approached (or don't mind it)? What about 30%? 40%? What if it turns out to be 51%? Then again: what if, of the guys who are likely to be "really into" a woman (according to the other rules that G.B. gives), it turns out that a clear majority would prefer to be asked out than have to do the asking? Maybe the reason it appears (as in Chapter 11 "Why This One Is Hard") that there are so few good men is because you've discounted the majority of good men already by not asking them out!

Chapter 13: Now what do you do?

Since “we just laid waste to your personal lives”, some advice for after the break-up.

“Ask you to at least try to notice, even just a tiny bit, how good it feels to be out of a relationship with someone who actually wasn't that into you. Can you at least feel that sense of relief?”

Good advice as far as it goes, but because a break-up is a form of loss, there are steps to go through; noticing the relief straight away will only come if there were really big issues in the relationship; for some of these rules, I think noticing the relief might take a while because of missing the good things that were in the relationship.

Takes energy to make excuses/”figure someone out”.

“Basically, you're going to have to feel the pain, you're going to have to go through it, and then you're going to have to get over it.”

So far, so good. Goes for everyone getting out of a relationship, I would guess! (Plenty of songs about it , f'rex!)

Book focussing on the future - “how to do it differently”.

Reset Your Standards:

“Let's set a dignified bar for you to exist at. Let's put you in charge of how it's going to go next time.

“A standard is setting a level for yourself of what you will or won't tolerate... Make sure you know what you stand for and what you believe in.”

This is great advice for anyone. Heck, I even try to follow it for myself as well when forming relationships (and not just of the romantic/sexual kinds). The issue I've had all along is that some of the standards G.B. (and to a lesser extent L.T.) set are just dumb.

“And because we obviously think we know better than you...”

Yeah, um... like I said, some of your standards are just dumb (not to mention sexist).

“...we're going to give you some standard suggestions.”

Uh-oh, I bet I can guess what's at the top, and I'm going to be cross...

[Edited to pick out the ones that annoyed me!]

• I will not go out with a man who hasn't asked me out first
• I will not date a man who isn't sure he wants to date me
• I will not be with a man who's afraid to talk about our future

Annoyed for the reasons explained previously. Other points were acceptable or downright good ones (again, they were points raised already).