Exclusive Interview
‘He’s Just Not That Into You’ Authors Reveal Dating Rules That Still Hold Up 20 Years Later
I think I speak for all certified lover girls raised on chick flicks and cheesy love songs when I say that the situationship was never meant to exist.
Now, don’t get me wrong: Other women see this setup as a source of empowerment, and honestly, I admire their inner strength! But it’s just that I was always briefed that a man either wanted you or he didn’t – the thought of some commitment phobe stringing me along for months until he figured out what to do with me was simply unfathomable.
Unfortunately, casual relationships with little to no discernible boundaries are part and parcel of modern dating culture, leaving a certain demographic in dreadful predicaments. One of the pillars of girlhood is putting everything on the line for a man who intermittently texts them “wyd?” at two in the morning.
New Line Cinema / Everett Collection
In these tumultuous times, it’s normal to turn to the past for any semblance of wisdom. Luckily enough, the early aughts were a treasure trove of well-meaning survival guides. One of the most popular from that time reads like an episode of Sex and the City, where authors Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo worked behind the scenes. The book was inspired by many makeshift therapy sessions in the writers’ room, where the women would gather around to ask Greg for his thoughts on the men they were seeing. His resounding answer to most of their concerns ended up being their title: He’s Just Not That Into You.
In the 20 years since the book’s publication, it has spawned a criminally underrated movie and a cultural revolution for women, who became quick to leave as soon as their supposed soulmates got shady. But how well do its tenets hold up today? Will the time ever come when we can chuck the guidebook out the window and just wear our hearts on our sleeves? I reached out to Greg and Liz to investigate.
Chapter 1: He’s just not that into you if he’s not asking you out.
Liz Tuccillo: It’s very interesting how this was the only rule – or “standard,” as we called it – that we had that got the most pushback even back then. What we were trying to say was that if you really wanna know if a guy likes you, then let him ask you out because they definitely know how to. It’s not that we thought it would be unseemly for a woman to make the first move. I just don’t think it’s a bad thing to wait and let them do it.
Greg Behrendt: In my daughters’ relationships, they were always the ones being pursued. I don’t mean that to be that they’re better than other girls, but I guess what I’m trying to illustrate is that that’s the way it generally works. A lot of what still comes up from women since we wrote the book is a lot of clarity surrounding their role [in the chase], but I think men are best when they are in pursuit of someone.
Tuccillo: Women would ask us about it a lot in our public Q&As like, “Do guys really have to be the ones to ask us out?” and Greg would say, “For God’s sake, women already give us babies. Can’t we do something?”.
Of course, today, there are dating apps that require women to make the first move to get the conversation going, and you’d think those would be a nice exception to the rule. But I think it feels like a bit of a gimmick – sure, you could be the one who starts messaging, but at the end of the day, a guy still can ghost you and that doesn’t really give you much to work with.
Behrendt: I have no dating app experience, so everything I know, I’ve heard from women as well as some of my buddies who are on there. Ninety percent of the people I talk to hate it. They’re on it, and they get off for a while, then they get back on and the whole while they’re there, they hate it. But people want to connect so they’ll try whatever venue opens up.
Chapter 2: He’s just not that into you if he’s not calling you.
Tuccillo: I still believe it’s a thing. Nobody’s any busier than they were 20 years ago, even with all the side hustles and jobs and hobbies they can have. We might be more distracted, but in the end, if somebody’s too distracted to keep in contact with you, then they’re not that into you still.
Behrendt: Not only that, there are a hundred ways to contact somebody now and make yourself present in their life. Texting has made things incredibly easy already – though I still do well with the regular phone call – but yes, if he’s not calling or messaging or in your DMs, then he’s just not that into you.
New Line Cinema / Everett Collection
Chapter 3: He’s just not that into you if he’s not dating you.
Tuccillo: A situationship is good only if both parties are fine with it. A lot of people are young and aren’t ready to jump into anything serious anyway. But it’s worth noting that our book was geared towards women who want to be in committed relationships to help them avoid wasting their time. If you’re not being honest with yourself and you’re pretending to be cool about it when you’re really not, that’s where our advice comes in.
Behrendt: A lot of the time, situationships follow messy people who are messy about all their other interactions with people. For example, when you’re in college and you’re not really sure where your life is going to go, you likely will find yourself in those entanglements because you haven’t landed [where you need to be in life] yet.
Angel Martinez: Okay, so that kind of gave me hope for my future. Some women just happen to be surrounded by non-committal assholes, but that doesn’t mean good guys aren’t out there?
Tuccillo: [Laughs] Right. You just have to release yourself from shady guys as quickly as possible.
Behrendt: Although, I must say that it’s incredibly hard to suss them out right now. Narcissists are very charismatic. We didn’t know a lot about them when we were writing the book and didn’t get to expand on such terms.
Chapter 4: He’s just not that into you if he’s not having sex with you.
Tuccillo: I’m very, very confident in saying yes. I don’t think a celibate relationship for young, healthy people is a good sign.
Behrendt: Agreed. It has always been the glue that makes the difference between a relationship and a friendship. You can have both in your relationship – I certainly do! – but I don’t want one without the other.
Tuccillo: This might be where we’re fuddy-duddies, and we just don’t understand something. I should just speak for myself, to be honest.
Behrendt: One of the first questions that spurred the creation of this book was somebody in the writers’ room who had invited a guy up to her place after dating him for a while, and he didn’t want to have sex with her. And that’s when we said that they just aren’t that into you. That’s the thing that kicked it off!
Martinez: One perspective people have these days is that it helps people reclaim their power – that even if they’re very much into someone, choosing not to have sex with them gives them this sense of agency.
Tuccillo: I guess there’s a lot of new relationship ideas out there so that’s something new I’m learning right now.
Chapter 5: He’s just not that into you if he’s having sex with someone else.
Behrendt: I think that cheating has to be defined by the couple. For some people, that constitutes flirting, while for others, it has to be sex. The couple defines what cheating is just as you would define whether you’d want to be in a relationship with a third person. If that’s something you can do comfortably, then have at it! I know some polyamorous people, I don’t know how they do it but they seem happy.
Tuccillo: It’s a good question. Can you be into two people at the same time and does that count? I guess for the polyamorous people, the answer is yes, but that’s still not something that I could ever do.
Behrendt: Same.
Tuccillo: But in general, if the idea is of someone sleeping with someone else when the other person doesn’t want them to, that still means they’re just not that into you.
Chapter 6: He’s just not that into you if he only wants to see you when he’s drunk.
Behrendt: As a recovering alcoholic, I’m not that into you if I’m an alcoholic. I’ve got something else going on and you might be a solution to a problem I’m having. But you’re not my everything; alcohol is. I think too much drinking is a bad sign, especially if it happens around sex because there’s an intimacy there.
Tuccillo: When the book was in the works, Greg was in a room with all of these women who were single and having boy problems, and it was really in the spirit of him being tough with us. We would say something like, “What if he’s a pothead?” and he’d be like, “Well, why would you wanna date a pothead? Why would you wanna be dating someone who isn’t fully present with you?”
Behrendt: Or with himself, for that matter.
Chapter 7: He’s just not that you if he doesn’t want to marry you.
Tuccillo: You know what? I’m kinda stumped. I’m not sure if that held up well. A lot of women need that stability and commitment because it makes them feel safe. If their partner doesn’t give them that, then maybe something’s up.
Behrendt: Funny enough, they address that in the movie, as you know, because you were the officiant at the ceremony!
Tuccillo: Right! Ben Affleck’s character ended up proposing to Jennifer Aniston even if he was commitment-phobic at the start.
Behrendt: In some way, after watching that, I felt like the guy got forced. It’s not like he was a bad guy before that problem, he just didn’t want to get married.
Tuccillo: So, you’re saying this doesn’t hold up as well as the others?
Behrendt: Yeah, I think so. Only because there are so many possibilities for couples now, in terms of how they want to hold their relationship. Obviously, gay men and women proved for years before they were allowed to get married that they could bond and be together for a lifetime.
Tuccillo: But there’s something about making it official and melding families and saying that this is important to you. If one party says it’s a non-negotiable while the other doesn’t want to do it, it’s something to investigate. Although there are enough people who have been together for such a long time [outside the institution of marriage] that it doesn’t feel like a hard and fast rule anymore.
Behrendt: I don’t think marriage holds the same place in our culture as it once did either.
Tuccillo: Back in the day, when we wrote this book, most of the romantic comedies out were about finding and wanting the guy, and they ended with walking down the aisle and having the big wedding. That’s just not reflective of what we’re seeing anymore.
Martinez: Will there ever come a time when rules won’t be necessary?
Tuccillo: Unfortunately, I don’t see a time where everyone’s going to behave with integrity and honesty in the foreseeable future: We’re still gonna need a guidebook to navigate it. Especially because online dating happened! My experience with that is very much negative, and I feel like men’s behavior got much, much worse to the point where it’s like we took a huge step back.
Behrendt: You have to be observant of what human beings are like and not be selfish, to your detriment. There must be guidelines in place to prevent the unfortunate from happening and to keep people from being driven by their impulses.
Martinez: How can today’s lover girls keep the hopeless romantic in them alive? Is this worth doing?
Behrendt: I think that the problem with the internet is that while there are guys looking to make real connections with women, men being men are still looking for sex. They’re driven that way, to look for intimate contact. Guys scroll and click on somebody hot, see if they can ask a few leading questions, maybe start sexting, and then meet in person. That’s just the way they are.
Tuccillo: If you want to be a woman who believes in love and doesn’t want to get her heart trampled on, you have to be as protective of yourself as a bodyguard would be for the most important person in the world. You need to have strong guideposts in your head to notice toxic, shady, flaky behavior as quickly as you can and keep moving the minute you suspect that something is amiss. While you can’t completely avoid getting your feelings hurt, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to limit it as much as you can.
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It’s easy to see that some of the pillars propping this book up have aged well, while others are due for a refitting. Even if there is a grim lack of prospects today, the dating scene has advanced over the past two decades: partners now have more flexibility, allowing their preferences and pleasure to come to the fore. So while these books can be helpful, readers are still advised to take them with a grain of salt.
In my humble opinion, the most underrated dating guide continues to be good ol’ intuition: You can acknowledge the sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach that signals something is off, even if you haven’t really played the field. Loving someone, after all, is meant to be easy. Maybe the fact that their actions keep you searching for explanations or justification from whatever source means… he’s just not that into you.
