Fuck you, Sex and the City writers!

A friend of mine just finished a book the other day called He's Just Not That Into You, a sort of women's self-help guide to dating. It's written by two writers from Sex and the City, something that should be a warning sign to anyone who considers reading the book. After all, these are two people whose only other qulification is having written a soap opera that largely consists of women bitching about their shitty love lives while holding up impossible ideals of what they want from men. The second warning sign should be that when looking the book over, it took me fifteen minutes to get through two chapters (there are 8 chapters in the book.) This would indicate that the book severely oversimplifies a complex issue, a conclusion backed up by the thread clearly running through the book: if he's not doing everything, he's not worth it. So let me respond to that with: if you don't put out, you're not worth it. Ladies? How'd that make you feel? Yeah, I thought so. Fact is, as much as I want to, if I were to write a book that countered the sentiment in HJNTIY, I would be attacked as a misogynist. If not by anyone else, by this guy, who seems to think anything with a penis qualifies as some level of misogynist. Luckily I have better people than that to rely on.



Considering that this was all inspired by a book a friend of mine bought because she couldn't understand why her relationships weren't working out, it should be mentioned that I find it sad when people can't figure out why things don't work out. I've never bought a book to explain to me how other people thought, because I fucking ask them. What happens to people that they are so scared of talking to each other about how they feel? Don't get me wrong, it's happened to me, recently, but I got over it. Quite happy about that. My friend Alejandro once told me that he could not understand pursuing therapy as a career, because he felt that things like therapy should be provided by your family and friends (as should housing, clothing, and food-Alejandro feels that all of your basic needs should be free, and I can't say I disagree.)

The sad thing about my friend buying this book is that like someone converted to fundamental Christianity, she will feel she has the answers until those answers fail her, and then she will go back to square one. What she needs is to internalize the philosophy of "if you meet Buddha on the road, kill him." Most Americans do. If you see something that seems to answer it all for you, it's not and it won't. Get that thought out of your head, it's completely wrong. After all, the only thing that this book tells you is that if guys don't call, don't ask you out, whatever, they're not worth it. Well, if someone says they'll call and they don't, they may be an asshole, or they may have a reason. My relationship advice is "think about how you feel. If more than half the time you've been going out, you've felt bad, the relationship is bad. If the average is feeling good, you may have problems, but it's worth working on."