One of my female friends has been going through an “extended pre-courtship ritual”, for lack of a better description, with one rugged fellow she’s met. Lately, though, things have seemed to stall…what’s up with that? Flirting: check! Meaningful conversation: check! But where’s the followup? So far, she’s seen zero action on his part, and frankly she’s getting tired of waiting.

So we’ve been chatting about the causes of this irritating lack of manly initiative on the dude’s part. As a guy, I had some theories about this embarassing lapse of action by “my team”…maybe he’s intimidated? Maybe he’s just a boy and doesn’t know what to do? Interesting to theorize about, but wasn’t getting my friend anywhere.

A couple weeks pass, and my friend mentions a book by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo called He’s Just Not That Into You: “The No Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys”. My assignment: read it and report whether it was full of crap or not; when I mentioned this to the help desk women at Barnes and Noble, they nodded in recognition and grimly led me to its resting place in the “relationships” section.

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