He loves me, he loves me not

Maria, a 34-year-old New Yorker, was freelancing at Barnes&Noble.com when she picked up the book out of "morbid curiosity." "I had spent a lot of time waiting by the phone," she wrote. "This book just tells you to stop." Kristina Bada, 27, who works in television, said, "It gave me a huge self-confidence boost ... If someone is truly 'into you,' then they will go through heaven and earth to spend time with you. They'll go without sleep, they'll travel if feasible, and they'll do whatever they have to do so they can see you." Jaime Licht, a 28-year-old San Diego law student, wrote, "Even my guy friends say it is incredibly accurate and are worried that college freshmen will read it and frat guys' sex lives will disappear." Twenty-four-year-old New Yorker Cara Lemieux wrote, "If only I could regain the hours I have spent overanalyzing e-mails, forwarding them to my friends, asking what they thought 'he' meant by a certain word or even the time of the day he sent the e-mail relative to the time 'he' gets into work ... [it] saves time [and] empowers us by making us realize that we are not alone in our delusions, and reminds us that we need to stop behaving like 'he' is the only man on the face of the planet and we are privileged to have his attention."

It's the new Atkins: no more pasta, and no more second dates with men who do not hit Reply promptly enough. By phone, coauthor Tuccillo told me that after her agent read the book proposal, she dumped her boyfriend. Two women told me that HJNTIY has become their "bible." And yes, many are turning the periscope over their shoulders and examining old relationships. They said that they now see old insults -- forgotten birthdays and avoidance of family gatherings -- for what they were: muddled enunciations of something their partners were just too cowardly to say outright -- that they just weren't that into them.

"We're upsetting a lot of women," said Tuccillo when I asked her about this relationship revisionism. But, she said, she is not shocked by how forcefully the book's mantra is being bandied about. "I thought when I was typing this book out with Greg that it was going to change the world and revolutionize dating," she said. "From the moment the idea came into the world, it seemed to be explosive."

Cynthia Rockwell, 50, lives in Connecticut and is an associate editor for Wesleyan [University] Magazine. "I really wish that I had had this book back in my 20s," wrote Rockwell, who is married to her second husband. "Oh, it's all so clear in retrospect that I made excuses for guys who were really a waste of my time." Rockwell recalled a loaf of bread she baked for her first husband; he didn't eat much of it. "Duh! He just wasn't that into me if he didn't care to accept a gift I'd made for him and wasn't concerned about hurting my feelings nor touched that I'd thought of him," she wrote. Or maybe he just didn't want the bread. No matter. Rockwell's current husband is very into her. "Soon after we started dating, he gave me a mug w/ my name on it that he'd found in the gift-shop at the hospital where he works, clearly showing that while we were apart going about our day, he'd been thinking of me," she wrote.

Martha Danly, a 51-year-old management consultant in Point Reyes, Calif., who said she does not watch television and reads the Economist and the New Yorker, had not read the book. But after receiving a forwarded copy of my message, she looked it up and was so struck by the title that she called to talk about it. Danly discussed a yearlong post-divorce relationship with a man who never said he loved her. "If I had read this book I would have said, 'Let's bring it down to what's really happening; in the end you are not giving me what I want.'" Danly said it was empowering to a point. "But why not change the title to 'You're Just Not that Into Him'?" She added: "I think it's important to ask women: How do we get hooked over and over again? We don't just make this shit up! Maybe they should call it 'He Is That Into You but He Cannot Express It.' Or 'I Just Don't Think He's Able to Be That Into You' or 'He's Just Not Meeting Your Needs and Therefore You're Just Not Into Him.'"

Of course, the authors of the book would tell Danly that in her enthusiasm for their message, she's twisting it back on herself and making excuses: If he's not expressing it, then he's just not that into you. Eleven of the book's 16 chapter titles begin with the mantra, each focusing on specific signs. He is just not that into you if he is not asking you out, not calling you, not dating you, not having sex with you, or having sex with someone else; if he only wants to see you when he's drunk, doesn't want to marry you, is breaking up with you, or has disappeared on you; if he's married, a selfish jerk, a bully, or a really big freak.

I have actually known several really big freaks who were seriously into me. Be that as it may: HJNTIY's message is loud and clear. There is something powerful about it, of course: a sense of freedom and self-worth that comes from stopping a loser relationship in its tracks. But the book's repeated scolding can also make you feel as if you've been clubbed repeatedly until you just want to haul your un-loved carcass into bed. Lucia Smith, a 22-year-old coordinator of a New York pediatric literacy program, wrote that she "devoured" the book. But she sagely commented, "They could have written 'Stop wasting your time because you're clearly worth more than this, because any girl would be worth more than this' in huge letters and called it a day."

Next Page: "It's like they're telling us to sit back pulling petals off daisies: He's into me, he's not into me..."

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