The key to relationships: Relate

I applaud the book “He’s Just Not That Into You,” discussed on Monday’s commentary page (”Removing man from woman,” ODE, May 23), for its approach to female self-worth as not reliant on a romantic interest. This is called self-esteem, and it is something that many women, and many men, suffer from a lack of. Clinging to a person to make you whole is called dependence, and kudos to yet more advice trying to get people off that addiction. However, the book’s problems weigh more than the praise it deserves.

The book’s ideas lower a woman’s role in a relationship to one of extreme passivity, telling women only to react rather than act. It fosters mistrust rather than trust and encourages assumption rather than communication. It fosters an individualist ethic rather than an ethic of relationship. I’m not about to say the book isn’t right to advise leaving a guy if he’s cheating, stringing a girl along or generally being a bad example of masculine and relational ethics. The book, though, assigns the same approach to every relational hurdle, from calling to dating to meeting parents to marriage. Men should certainly treat women well, but every time a man doesn’t call for a while or act in a relationship the way a woman expects and assumes he should, the advice the book gives is that he must not be that into you, so get out and move on. This is not reality.

Full article (Oregon Daily Emerald)