'He's Just Not That Into You' Really?

We live at a time when frankness has tremendous virtue. It is brief. It is clear. It is to the point. But what if it were just plain wrong?

Several circumstances of "he's just not that into you" came to my attention recently, and they were all curiously similar even though on the surface they looked different. For the purpose of confidentiality, the names do not reflect the real names of people in these circumstances.

In the first situation, Kate and Andy were good friends at first and then started to "hang out" together. To Kate, what developed seemed to be a mutual attraction, but no matter how many times she indicated her interest, Andy would not "make a move." Eventually, she went out with him one night, and rather than pursue her usual indirect line of inquiry, she got incredibly drunk and started to make advances. Andy, despite spending three nights a week with Kate, complimenting her on the way she looked, laughing with her, loving her and having no other person in his life he could trust more, responded with shock: "Kate, what are you doing?" he asked. Needless to say, Kate was embarrassed by her apparently appalling lack of insight, and to make a long story short, when she spoke to her friends about this, they said: "He's just not that into you". Was Kate really completely off the mark, or was there some other phenomenon at play here?

Same story-different sex, when Jake and Mark, two close friends started to hang out together a lot. Nobody noticed since they hid under the heterosexual umbrella of "bromance" and "metrosexual" and "I love you man". Two guys who like hanging out together, have common interests, love and trust each other and really don't like spending that much time with anyone else. But when Jake's turn came to behave like Kate, Mark was suitably shocked. "I love you man, but not like that". Again, Mark's argument (much like Andy's) was that he was not "sexually stimulated" or "attracted" to Jake. He was more "attracted to girls".

In both of these cases, there are some serious questions that hide under the "he's just not that into you" story. What does "not being into you" mean? People assume that it is just about sexual attraction, but is it just this? I would like to propose an alternative, inspired in part by the sometimes absurd claims of "bromance" and in part by men who are afraid of their strong feelings toward women they can't feel sexual about.

The alternate theory is this: that in order to be sexually attracted to someone, and to maintain long-term sexual relations, you need to feel some form of trust and comfort that brings you together. But what if women you truly loved were threatening because they made you feel trapped? Or if a same sex friend brought up primitive and unconscious fears of being ostracized? With that degree of fear or internalized threat, how could you possibly feel trust?

The same areas of the brain that light up with fear are turned down by trust. So if you have a fear of intimacy with someone you really love, that fear is going to turn down the trust and not allow you to form a long-term commitment. Similarly, if you have strongly internalized homophobia- if you have "learned" that your life's vision was that you were not "gay" but if people saw you this way, you would be judged, there would be no chance that you could easily develop trust because the fear would overwhelm this.

In these circumstances, people often form love connections with people who are more socially acceptable: in Andy's case, a more emotionally distant but good-looking woman, and in Mark's case, with someone with whom he could have an erection. (I have noticed that even when men in this situation have erections, they account for them in other ways). After all, his erection (or acknowledgment of it) would forever be prevented by his intense fear of social rejection, even if Jake was the love of his life.

Now, I'm not saying this is always the case. I am just making a case for: "he's not just that into you" being not that great an answer, especially if it masks real fear and prevents real love that needs just a little (okay, maybe not a little) more introspection. If all other dimensions of intimacy are great but there is just no sexual attraction, you may want to consider that it is the very closeness that prevents you from committing to a bond that you could enjoy and benefit from for the rest of your life.

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Comments

[NotARedneck]

The 2/3 of men who are not very attractive (or not attractive at all) to most women, have usually been insulted and abused in their earlier efforts to interact with women. After a few years of this, they are reluctant to make any move. They just assume that women they are interested in, aren't interested in them and if they make a move, they not only will be rebuffed but this will end any positive contact they are having with the woman in question. Therefore, if a woman sees the virtues in such a man, it is usually necessary to make the first move. Being drunk doesn't help.

However, for a woman, this is a rare insight into how badly most men have it. Despite what the feminists say, most men are at the bottom of the pecking order and invisible to women just as they claim that most women are invisible to the men they crave.

However, if this is a more conventional male/female interaction, where the woman desires and pursues a man who is a "catch" then I'm afraid that yes its true. "He's just not that into you" Why should he be? He probably has lots to chose from and likely you are nowhere near to meeting his "standards".

[PatA]

I've never thought that the phrase meant just sexual attraction. I think it means spirit, sexuality, soul and intelligence........

[Social Construct]

After one read through, I think this is about a difference between social intimacy and sexual intimacy, and/or fear of social intimacy leading to sexual intimacy because of accepted societal normative values? I'm still left a bit confused by the article.

[salamanda]

I don't think you are disagreeing with the "he's just not that into you" philosophy so much as exposing the dysfunction associated with the "other side" - the side that claims to not be into someone. The "not that into you" philosophy was designed to protect people from continuing to puruse affections from someone who will likely never return them in a satisfying way. The reasons why the "rejectors" do so are likely those you pointed out.

[BarryS]

or, you are just not sexually attracted to the other person. Not everyone is ready to hop into bed with any other warm body. Sexual feelings are not always mutual. C'est la vie.

[DiogenesOfAlaska]

it seems he wasn't speaking of one-sided sexual attraction - which probably happens every day - but of more profound sources of confusion.