What do you do when the man you’re dating vacillates in his affections for you?
I’m not talking about the inconsistency that comes from a busy week at work or after a heated argument with his parole officer, but the inconsistency that comes straight from his disinterest, or maybe even inability, in being with you.
A book so precisely titled that it need not have been anything more than that, He’s Just Not That Into You certainly nailed it on the head. Why hasn’t he called you back? Because he’s just not that into you. Period. Next, please. It suddenly made the problem so simple. Where was this book when I was so obliviously wasting my 20s and 30s with the wrong men? Personally, I believe the American Psychiatric Association muscled their way into delaying publication of this book for decades for fear of losing great quantities of business.
Okay, fine, but what about the other half of the guys out there?
The ones who are in to you, and yet regularly stump you with their WTF attitude? What do you do when he’s doing the dance of intimacy to the tune of he loves me, he loves me not?
Case in point: he asks you out—he asks you out—and then stands you up. Or you have a great date—both of you relaxed, laughing, sharing intimate details about yourself—he says he’ll call you the next day, and then doesn’t. Or he does phone you back right away, but then a few weeks later—poof!—he just stops calling. I mean, even corporations send out a memo about impending lay-offs.
I have just two words to say: cray-zee.
I’m not even talking about the certifiable kind of insanity, just the garden variety that we all will encounter on this journey called dating. People who don’t know what they want. People who know what they want and are afraid to speak up. People who are looking for sex but not love, or love but not sex. Selfish people who couldn’t care less that their dance of intimacy is two-stepping all over your heart. Controlling people who need a beck-and-call girl. Fearful people who need to have options but don’t let you know that you are merely Backup Plan B.
So what do you do when the man you’re dating vacillates in his affections for you? Don’t put up with it. (A solution so complex it takes an Einstein equation to get to it.) List your bottom lines if you need clarity—non-negotiable: dating a prison escapee; negotiable: dating his parole officer—and then respect your word to yourself enough to follow it.
If your employer kept laying you off and then rehiring you, praising you daily and then giving you a bad evaluation, raising your salary and then lowering it, you’d quickly walk away from that organization. So why not do that in a relationship?
Selena Templeton is a blogger for JenningsWire, a blogging community created by Annie Jennings.
