"Not That Into You" chapter 15 & 16 notes

Not far to go now on this series (seeing as we're on the closing remarks of the two authors!), just a couple more after this. Soon you'll have all the raw material my brain churned out as I read through "He's Just Not That Into You". Once I've done that, I'll write the post that I would normally have written as soon as I'd finished reading the book!

For now, though, on with the show:



Chapter 15: Closing remarks from G.B.

"I don't need to know you to know that at the very least you ought to think that way about yourself." (i.e. "You're cool, cute" etc).

Fair enough. Although getting there is somewhat harder than it might seem for a jerk like someone as self-confident as G.B.

"…who am I to be giving advice to others? I am a formerly single guy who gave those same lame excuses, so I know what these guys are really doing."

Because, of course, every guy is the same as every other guy, is the same as fuckin' Greg fuckin' Behrendt. I forgot that we're all really just emotional clones of one another.

"…at the core the 'He's just not that into you' concept can truly have a magical transcendent effect. It's not bad news if it helps you free yourself from a relationship that's beneath you."

Where the philosophy is applied from a "Is this good for me?" basis, yes. But G.B. often applies it from a "I can read the minds of all men, everywhere!" basis, and that pisses me off because it seems I am not, in G.B.'s terms, a man – yet to the untrained eye I sure look like one.

Chapter 16: Closing remarks from L.T.

"G.B. is really annoying." Reasons: very high standards; sees everything in black&white; unswerving optimism (clashes with L.T.'s pessimism). Most of all, is often right.

…

"G.B. … demands that men treat us better than even we think they should. We have been conditioned to expect so little, told not to be demanding, not to seem needy. But what would happen if all the women in the world listened to G.B. – if we all started insisting that men keep true to their word, treat us with respect, shower us with the appropriate amount of love and affection? I think there'd be an awful lot of better-behaved men in the world."

Well, again – I'm going to turn that around. But when I do I need to be clear on something. So, what if men started requiring that women (and other men, for that matter) kept true to their word, treat US with respect? (I leave off the "shower us with the appropriate amount of love and affection" because I think for a lot of women, and especially those at whom the book is aimed, they are entirely giving too much of those to certain guys – and I think they're socialised to do so). But I think it's important in thinking this that when I think about requiring/insisting on "respect" isn't the macho posturing "respect" crap that leads to so much domestic violence and hatred. That use of "respect" is entirely illegitimate and what those men really want is servitude. I mean the basic regard for humanity. Treating as equals! Respect in the same sense as L.T. means it in the passage above.

Because if women are told not to seem needy or demanding, then men are told not to seem emotional or involved. The world teaches us all that men are not emotional creatures, which is just a big fucking lie. And it's one that G.B. seems to buy into when he wrote this book.

(See "worthiness trap" concept.)