Thank you,Chickadee, for not condemning me to much in this last effort! There have been other men in my last three years alone and in isolation to whom I didn't respond. I did to this man, but it turned out not right for me.
I know this now.
ARI

Oh honey, what you do doesn't change our lives so don't worry about what we think or feel in this. Maybe you needed to do this to get him out of your system once and for all. Closure. Whatever works.

It's a lonely world out there and there are a lot of people looking for someone.

Listen, I work with battered women who go back and have flings with men who beat, choked, kicked and raped them. It's hard to understand unless you know the dynamics going on. So, don't abuse yourself and just do what you gotta do!

Thank you, Dianne and Smile...
"If it doesn't feel good, don't do it twice."
You can't imagine how many times that statement was going thru my mind as I cooked a dinner, drove 2 hours to Dave's, had sex, and then cried again when he told me he "wasn't in love with me." I've acted out in childish and hateful ways since then, forwarding him a message from a close male friend (Harvard grad., judge and mediation lawyer) who calls him a "cad." Really hateful stuff, and he responded indignantly, but I felt it was good for him to see another male's perspective on his behavior toward me...I know this is over now, ending on a very, very bad note!
ARI

Are you sure you can let this go and not communicate with him anymore? It's important. It only drags it out and makes it uglier.

Well, though he had told me in email and over the phone that he was not "in love" with me, I didn't get it, my feelings for him were so strong. Actually seeing his body language, his facial expressions, when he told me that in person this past weekend, is burned into my mind! Dear God, at the age of 54, I am so much beyond this kind of behavior. I actually rec'd an email message from him this evening saying he had no hard feelings for me, but it would not continue. I agreed. So, that is IT!!! I think some time alone is required from all of this, and that's not a bad thing. I need to assess my attitudes and behavior before meeting anyone else, IF there is to be anyone else. I have spent three years alone, and learned to like my own quiet company, working on my art abd studying the Bible. Before meeting this man, who said he believes in "nothing," I actually looked forward to getting in bed each night and reading the Bible. When we initially met, via the Internet, I shared that with him! I let that all go, giving my energy over to the relationship! I have returned to my nightly study and hope to regain my "balance" soon.
ARI

Allright ladies I'm going to read ALL (yes! madam moderator I know I'm shouting) of your posts eventually but I've read enough for the moment.

I have read and reviewd the entire book and it's dangerous. The possibility that he's just not into you is very real but the rest of the book contains more holes than a colander. If you blindly follow this book you will cultivate destructive relationships and will destroy promising ones.
I will go through this in detail, with everyone a little later but for th e moment her are the few vital points about the book that you have to be aware of.

- "Not into you", and "taking you for granted often exibit the same symptoms" paticularly the failure to rng for anythigbut an emergency. But taking you for granted is a symptom of a committed relationship. Not into you is a symptom of a detorating one. Don't confuse them or you will reject a committed partner.

- Men are individuals. Men are not men. They are, in order of priority, 1/ Individuals 2/Single or married 3/Fathers or not 4/Workers (doctors, truckers etc) 5/ Sportsmen 6/Rich or not 7/ Men (possibly) Thats where gender fits on the male attitude. The biggest mistake that any female can make is to generalise about male attitudes. For every generalsisation that Greg makes about male attitudes I can find one individual male that conforms to it and a dosen that don't.

- Women are not "Fabulous". And men do not want fabulous women. (We will talk about that one later or I will overload the board)

- Most of Gregs attitudes are a product of the female culture. It has very little to do with the very real attitudes of the rest of the worlds male population.


I'm going back to readin fro the moment but, if anyone has read the book and is unsure about the accurrracy of the questions or Gregs answers, I have read and given alternative answers to almost all of the questions.

I felt I was "in love" with this man. He made it clear he was not in love with me...only feeling "concern" in the clinical sense.

I know I have to feel the pain of this and move on. It's just so hard!
===========================================
Ariadne
You didn't tell me if this guy was divorced or not but, even if he is long term single then he's probably helped out a few divorced buddies.
So let me tell you about pain.

In Australia, post divorce trauma, leads one in thirteen divorced men to suicide. If that doesn’t sound like a high figure then consider that the suicide rate caused by post rape trauma is less than one in a hundred rape victims. Not only is divorce Australia’s biggest cause of suicide. It’s double all the rest of the suicide causes put together. It’s a body count equal to the national road toll. And the figures would be similar in the USA.
That’s the kind of trauma that you can’t even imagine but I’ll dwell on the issue of post rape trauma for comparison even if not a good one. Hypothetical! A girlfriend of yours is coming home from a hot date, dressed to the nines, in really sexy gear. She’s accosted in a back street and raped. In court the rapist comes out with the usual drivel that she was asking for it because the was wearing sexy clothing. The court dismisses that excuse and jails him anyway. Tell me this Lindsey, would you ever expect your friend, still suffering post rape trauma, to ever wear that same clothing again? Would you be surprised if she burned it? There’s your answer.

Any man, who has been directly, or even indrectly, burned by post divorce trauma is going to keep the committted relatinships at a distance. Casual ones yes. Committed ones no.
Is this starting to sound a little more like your intellectual friend?

Yes Araine I know you feel pain. But that pain has never had you seriously contemplating suicide has it? That's the pain of a divorced man.

You put him before your very life, risking losing yourself in a snow storm. Evidently, his BMW was more important to him than you.
===========================================
Not quite Lyn. He didn't realise how totally Araiane had fallen for him and he didn't expect her to come out in that weather.
Now heres an interestng double standard Lyn. If Ari was risking her life by driving to him then he would have been risking both his lifeand his BMW by driving to see her. Quite frankly I don't expect either of them to risk life and limb, when they can easily see one another when the weather improves.

A beautiful life / ********** awaits you, one that is stress free, loving and genuine. And who deserves that more than you?
=====================================
Chickadee.
You may have noted that I have removedthe word "relatinship" Ari is coming to terms with a wrecked relationship and I can't think of much that would be cruler that promising her rainbows with pots of gold at the end of them
Ari
A beutiful life does await you but probably not a relationship. Only fifty percent of the population ever gets married and half of them get divorced. (Austrlian Bereau of Stats) I don't have accurate data for your age group but I think its only about one in eight women your age who are actually married. The rest are single, widowed, or divorced.
BUT!!!!! Almost all of them are happily widowed, single or divorced.
Theres a great site about this called Leather Spinsters. Yes I know it sounds like a bunch of man hating lesbians but it's nothing like that at all. I'ts motto is "Happily Single" and its a great site.

We have to learn to sit back, enjoy the glorious women we are and wait for that special someone who will worship at our feet.
========================================
Diane
That elderley gentleman was not giving you good advice. He was being nice to you. He was telling you the kind of lies that give you a warm fuzzy feeling. And he was old enough to know it.
Just stop and think about what he said. "Special people" don't worship at anyones feet. Common people worship at their feet. So forget that.

Now! To the real nitty gritty.
Glorious women, superfox, high maintinance women. This is exactly what puts the guys off.
Try this section directly from the book

Not into you Page 8
Greg reminded us that we were all beautiful, smart, funny, women and we shouldn’t be wasting our time figuring out why a guy is not calling us.


===== Greg failed to mention that beautiful is the last on the list of desirable traits that real men seek. The other traits can be as undesirable as desirable. I note that Greg never used the word “horny” when he described the ladies. From a purely sexual point of view that’s a hundred times more important than “beautiful”. From a general point of view the most important characteristic of the lot is “likes men” Most women are actually so conditioned to man hating that even they aren’t aware of how bad they really are.
Smart is desirable. Smart ass is not. Funny ceases to be funny, in a hell of a hurry, if funny consists of a continuous stream of malicious jokes about men. To get some idea of how unfunny this sort of thing becomes, in a hurry, try spending a couple of days cracking nothing but blonde jokes and see how fast the blondes in the office lose their sense of humor.

Get both your nose, and your standards, out of the stratosphre and have a really good look at the good(not perfect) men all around you.