Recently, the dating world seems to be rife with the impression that if he doesn’t call you he’s “just not that into you” yet I, for once, have to beg to differ and argue, only partly, on the side of men. Obviously, if it’s been weeks since your first date, you should probably take the hint, otherwise, give the poor boys a chance. So many of my friends of late are, to put it bluntly, ridiculously impatient. They meet a guy on Saturday night, “friend” them on Facebook by Sunday lunch, and come Tuesday, they are analyzing the possible reasons why contact hasn’t been made and ultimately decide ‘he’s just not that into me’. All in the space of two days. Forty-eight hours. 2,880 minutes. If you think about it, that really isn’t a very long time.
My general response to this “freak out” is to calm down. Just because technology has advanced to the point where we can get what we want, when we want, in almost all circumstances, it does not mean relationships have too and the biggest mistake my single friends appear to make is their need for “it” to happen now, now, now. For love to happen it needs to be a marathon, not a sprint. Take Miranda in Sex and the City for example; she presumes that her date isn’t ‘into’ her when he actually just had the unfortunate case of diarrhea. Now I am not suggesting that most men spend days on the toilet after a date but they do probably get on with their lives, whether they are into you or not. Take the recent film ‘He’s just not that into you’ for example: Kevin Connolly’s character Conor goes home after a date and cracks open a beer with his flat mate and relaxes. He does not stare at the phone like Ginnifer Goodwin’s character Gigi does, waiting for the person she has spent all night with to call or text (something all ladies shouldn’t be doing anyway!) Men just aren’t programmed that way. It’s very likely that football features high on their priority list on a Sunday, Monday is work and gym night, Tuesday is taken up with golf/photography (or another hobby) class, Wednesday holds the weekly mid-week drinks with the boys and before they know it, it’s Thursday. With not even a thought to text us ladies.
The most enlightening conversation I had recently with one of my man friends regarded the fact that men can’t multi-task and via a conversation about Skype chatting we discovered this covers not just their physical but also mental ability too. Men can’t talk and do something else at the same time Let me explain this further: If a man is thinking about work, he is only thinking about work. Not “work and ... what’s for dinner later, need to put washing on, must post that letter, Sam called last night (must call her back), got to tidy the bathroom, what can I wear to Holly’s tonight, hmmm why hasn’t that yummy man from Saturday night text?”; just some examples of the things that most women can think of all in one go. Men can only think of one thing at a time. So with this in mind, it is clear that whilst we think about them practically all day, they don’t or can’t think about us that much so any urgency to text or call is, presumably, not there. “That’s still not good enough” I hear you say. Well, unfortunately, I don’t think men shall ever change and the sooner we get used to that, the more peace of mind we shall have and hopefully, the more into us men we shall have.