He's just not that into you. And neither am I.

Okay. On occasion I will rent a ridiculous chick flick to watch in the privacy of my living room, alone. Once I watched a good one: Notting Hill. Sliding Doors was pretty good too. Then I watched the first Sex and the City movie and I couldn't figure out how some cool chicks in their thirties could so rapidly become so totally fucking useless, trivial and boring.
For some reason (I was in a hurry, I had PMS, the cover was exceptionally shiny) I rented He's Just Not That Into You. Truly they are words to live by when it comes to dealing with the opposite sex. If he wants to talk to you: he'll call you. If he likes you: he will spend time with you. It's really, really simple.
Naturally I have, in the past, thought I was an exception to the rule and that a flurry of phone calls or emails was an extraordinarily brilliant way to cajole someone into discovering what an amazing and ethereal person I am, but yeah...
Anyways. This movie. So in it Jennifer Aniston is with Ben Affleck for seven years. He loves her and dotes on her but does not believe in marriage. So she leaves him. After her father has a heart attack and the husbands of her sisters prove to be useless, he shows up and gives her a hand taking care of her father. Without being asked. Being supportive. She is so taken with this that she visits him and he tells her he's loved her, he's always loved her and she says marriage be damned, I want to be with you.
But then, of course, he proposes anyways. And I thought "okay, at least she will recognize the effort that he has made to go to such lengths to make her happy and she will say no to the proposal".
Nope. She accepts it and they marry. Yep. Nothing is indicative of a super strong bond between two people as one that is made of guilt and coercing and expecting people to go against their belief system because, somehow, the love that you get after being married is just that much more intense than the love you get before you get married.
What the shit. Oh my god. I just don't know where to start. This could be a very long blog. I feel bad for guys that, after two years, know that they are obligated to start considering shelling out 5 or 10k on a ring to prove their loyalty and commitment to the person they love. And is there not another woman out there that equates the positioning of that ring on their finger as a form of ownership? There's this whole push, a whole industry built around this. There are wedding shows and wedding showers and wedddings and gifts and all the associated jewellery and then after ten or twenty years you should buy her some other ring to tell her you'd marry her all over again. What are we trying to accomplish here, as women? What is the message of this movie? Kick your partner out of your house until he "comes to his senses"? Don't put up with anything less than a carat?
I had a boyfriend once and we had some fight about something. He came into work the next day with a dozen long stemmed red roses and I capitulated. I took them home that day and my dad intimated that my boyfriend had essentially "bought" me. I have never forgotten that. And yet here we are, essentially asking to be bought. Forcing the men that love us to do things that they don't want to for the privilege of getting to spend the rest of their lives with us.
If there's one thing I'm not, it's chattel.
I need to stop watching these goddamn ridiculous movies.
The best part of this veritable train wreck was when one "interviewee" was sitting there, exquisitely dressed, sipping cognac and discussing how her first husband cheated on her in such an unimaginative way that she actually felt sorry for him. The second husband was a bit more entertaining because at least he slept with her sister and played enough head games with her so that she thought she was going crazy. Her third husband, though she went through all his cell bills and intercepted his credit card statements, was able to conceal his affairs from her until his passing when she learned of the house he shared with his Austrian mistress.
Her point was that over three marriages, several boyfriends and a plethora of lovers: she had never been caught.