Not Into You?

It all started on the play ground, as a nine years old girl learnt a valuable lesson that will remain with her for the rest of her life. This life lesson was brought about by Billy - the 10 years old cool kid on the block pushing her off the swing. As she cried her tears of pain - her older sister running up to her gave her these home truths, “the reason Billy pushed you off the swing and hurt you is because he really likes you”. This lesson will remain with this young girl for the rest of her life as she wades through her story of love realizing that often times hurt and pain often comes with that thing called love.

I remember a couple of years ago - a book came out chronicling this tale of love and hurt and this book became an instant success as the mantra for all single dating women became, “maybe he is not that into you”. But, despite the success of this book and of course the movie that came out a couple of months ago - many are still falling into the same trap and realizing a little bit too late that there often is no correlation between love and sex. This write up applies to both men and women. These are the points to keep in mind that he/she is not that into you.

1) Emotional signs: He finds it difficult to call you his girlfriend or his significant other. He has been with you for more than 6 months and yet still hasn’t said,” I love you”. He loves that word, “friend” and in his mind that often means - “fuck buddy”.

2) He shows you disrespect - I have always believed that the way a person treats another one defines what you think about that person. A person who is condescending, always never has anything positive to say about anything you do is definitely not a person you should have around you because what that person does is bites away at your esteem until you find yourself asking for their opinion on anything that concerns you. Any person that puts down your values, ideals , your ideas is definitely not into you. I will go as far as saying that you are setting yourself up for an emotionally abusive relationship that can potentially be physically abusive if care is not taken.

3) Mr. Chaser: Now, this is a special breed that most women have met at one time or the other in their dating lives. This guy is just thrilled with the chase. He loves looking like a God. What he does is that he chases, romances, buys, spoils and makes it seem as though he is in love with you and only you and when he gets what he wants - he moves on to the next person. The only way to avoid getting hurt by this special breed is to have a ‘breathe button’ where you constantly assess everything he does and you try to ensure that you do not get caught up in the ’superficial’ or ‘things’. Find out what he is about? Who is he really? Don’t fall for the lines. “You are the only one for me” often is a line that he sprouts to several people at the same time, you and the person he meets online at 10 pm at night.

4) Friends with Benefit: I am not going to say anything more about this. Please, read previous posts to see what I have said about this. I will recommend that you do the friends with benefit thing only if you can handle it. Don’t start and start thinking about a relationship unless HE brings it up.

5) Dwindling communication: Remember how you two met? You could hardly get enough of each other. Every moment you were either texting, calling, or using other communication tools to keep in touch and then all of a sudden he is too busy to call, text or use those tools. Or most importantly when you two talk, you don’t talk about anything really important. You don’t know about his family, work, friends etc. Trust me on this - someone else is getting that information and enjoying the privilege of these communication. As I often say, if you suddenly drop off the radar - someone else IS on that radar.

I chose these five points because I have seen so many African men and women fall into these traps. If you feel the need to drop me a line, or comment, you can meet on facebook (Pamela Stitch).