He’s just not that into you?

     Did you all read this book?  I don’t suppose many of the men did, which is a shame, because this stuff certainly works both ways.  But then again, I wasn’t a huge fan. 

     As any of us who have been in a truly confusing situation with a romantic interest know, it just isn’t that simple.  There are a lot of reasons someone may be giving you mixed signals, and many of them have little or nothing to do with you or their feelings for you.  A guy can be crazy about you, but when he thinks about it working out, he gets completely freaked out about what he feels that would require of him.  A woman may be intrigued, but may be concerned about what she sees as a major incompatibility issue.   It can be about rent, religion or readiness…and yes, it can be that they just aren’t sure how they feel about you.  But the fact of the matter is, and I guess this is what the book was getting at, is that anywhere on this continuum of reasons to excuses, the truth remains – whatever is in the way is bigger than his/her feelings for you.  He’s just not THAT into you, as in, he’s not into you ENOUGH.  And you know what, he (or she) should be.  For it to work, his feelings for you need to be bigger than just about anything else.  And really – don’t you want them to be?  Why would you want to try to make it work with someone whose feelings for you are “LESS than”?

     And if you are on the other end of this, you may do well to ask yourself, doesn’t this person deserve that – someone who feels unequivocally for them?  And if you can’t give it to him (or her), what the hell are you doin?  Get out of the way!

     I’ve had it done to me, and I’ve done that to someone, and I’ll tell you something – those times someone did it to me don’t touch me at all anymore – in fact, I thank them every day for letting me go so I could find the man I was meant to be with.  But I am afraid I will always be somewhat haunted by the time I did it to someone else, and the damage that did both of us. 

When is the right (and wrong) time to move in?

     It’s very easy to get excited about “playing house” with your mate.  That is, if you have no understanding about the consequences of the decision.  And I’m not trying to moralize here.  I’m not concerned with the moral, religious or social implications.  And though I have seen them, I am not personally concerned with any statistic about people who live together first and their rate of divorce -until they can explain the reasons why.  But this is, in a sense, a “no turning back now” kind of decision.  Not that you’ll never be able to end the relationship once you’ve moved in.   Though you definitely will have made it extremely challenging to do so.  Your lives become incredibly enmeshed when living together, make no mistake about it.  It’s not something to try if you aren’t thinking “forever”.  But it’s also that there is no going back to any earlier stage of the relationship once you have lived together.  So if you take this step before you are ready, and things go sour, the relationship will end.  So what does “ready” mean?

     My husband and I were together about three months when we found ourselves talking about moving in.  The question came up because his lease was up and he had gotten a new job, so he was going to be moving.  I was on a month-to-month, and we both knew I wasn’t happy there.  But we were trying so hard to be smart.  “My lease is up” is NOT a good reason to move in together, nor is “I hate where I am living”.  We both seemed to have a sense that this relationship was heading in a marriage direction, but it was clearly too soon to be talking about that, so clearly also too soon to be talking about moving in.  So for a while, we didn’t talk about it.  We talked about creating a situation with his move that would leave the door open to our making that decision “at some point”.  “At some point” meaning within a year, since the issue was about whether he should avoid signing a year lease so we are free to move in whenever we want, or get a big enough place for me to eventually join him, but then have to shoulder that bill until we decide to move forward.  And though neither one of these scenarios was ideal, they were also, in our opinion, not reasons to move in together.

     So we moved in anyway, and I’ll tell you why – because even with full knowledge of what a big step it was, even with complete understanding about what were the wrong reasons operating here, and what the consequences of the decision may be, we still just really wanted to do it.  Because even with the full foundation of wisdom we felt we had as adults, we still got REALLY EXCITED about “playing house”.