Not that into you

The thing about holiday houses is that they tend to collect interesting stuff - particularly reading matter. The cupboard in the room we stayed in this weekend was packed with a variety of books - everything under the sun, and most of them anciently dusty. By contrast, the shelves everywhere else were empty... weird!

But on one of the bookshelves was a much more recent book, the famous "He's Just Not That Into You". I've heard the hype, but never read it - so it was with curiosity I picked it up for a brief browse before breakfast. And a whole lot of it makes sense, in a strange way. Where women will analyse and pick apart everything, to men it may be clear as day and simple - while many women simply hang on, hoping for change, their men may just be there because they don't know how to leave (or are too lazy to). Etc, etc... Long list of interesting situations given, and I can see my own past reflected in a good few of them.

Back home I got on the net and found out what some folk had said about the book - good and bad - and that there was a later one published too, "Face it - you're not that into him either". OK... seems it's a problem on both sides of the gender divide, this clinging on to things that aren't actually there.

But no-one seems to have written a "He's really into you" or a "You're really into him". :-) Perhaps because there's no set book of guidelines for that one? Or is it just that it hardly ever happens? The pessimist in me says the latter - the optimist says "you know it when you see it, and you certainly don't need a handbook".
With all the self-help books out there though, such a thing appears to be a pretty rare occurance. If one goes by shelves and sales' worth, seems hardly anyone's into anyone, and a good percentage of the population doesn't know how to handle it. Or much else in life, for that matter.

But I'm (again) a firm believe in gut feel. If something's right or something's wrong, there will always be a small voice somewhere in the head telling you so, provided you choose to listen and not smother it.

Perhaps I should write a book about that.