He loves me, he loves me not

As for the book's resemblance to "The Rules," Tuccillo said, "We were all obsessed with "The Rules" when it came out because it was telling women to behave as if they had self-esteem even if they didn't have it. The criticism of it -- which is valid -- was that the goal seemed to be only to get a man. And ours is pretty much the opposite. We're saying 'Move on, sister.' And not just 'Move on so he'll come back.' Actually, 'Just move on.'" Rottenberg and Zuritsky, the episode writers, maintain that the beauty of the HJNTIY rule is that they're foolproof. "I don't fear that someone's going to take this too far, because let's say you decide, I haven't heard from him all week, so I'm going to move on," Rottenberg said. "And then he calls. Well, that's great too. Nobody's saying you should burn him in effigy!" "Or burn yourself in effigy," Zuritsky added.

All these circular arguments are particularly funny in light of the simplicity of the original HJNTIY message. "The authors never mention that the character who originally spoke that line was Jack Berger," observed Lea, a 31-year-old publishing executive. "He was the utterly self-obsessed and emotionally immature asshole writer who broke Carrie Bradshaw's heart with a Post-it note. So he's the wise man? He's the truth teller?"

Turning to the original text does problematize the whole He's Just Not That Into You thing. In the episode in question, Miranda indeed finds liberation in Berger's revelation. But she later applies it to another guy, who's running off after an Indian meal. It turns out he has diarrhea. It's part of the joke of the episode: No edict, no matter how revelatory, can be safely applied to every situation. Sometimes he really just has to go.

It's sad to compare that carefully observed truth to Behrendt's Dr. Phil commando parenting-style response to "Nikki," one of the book's fictional complainants, who "writes" that her boyfriend doesn't pay attention to her because he is "totally important and totally busy." "Too busy or important to ask you out or call you -- what a catch," Behrendt responds. "Congratulations on your quasi-relationship! It must feel amazing to know that you've been programmed into the super hot and important busy guy's cellphone, even if he never uses it to call you. You must be the envy of every woman he's really dating." Behrendt's tone is a bracing slap administered by a man to the face of a hysterical woman.

In Carrie Bradshaw's universe, that's not cool. "Sex and the City" was a cultural salt lick for a reason. It took old notions of female hysteria and frivolity and turned them on their heads. It was never about desperation or insanity, but about what happens when complicated people collide and each collision forms something new: new pain, new fun, new sex, new commitments, new disappointments.

And much as the women I heard from this week kvelled over how the HJNTIY balm can erase all the painful uncertainty from our lives, I have to ask: does leaching the complexity of life always bring relief? I don't think I'm alone is saying that sometimes tortured romantic plotting is fun. And OK, when it's not fun, at least it reminds us that we can feel. Making outrageous suppositions and creating fantastical narratives and theories about what's going on in our love lives can occasionally feed a very real hunger for something to think about other than our jobs and ourselves. We all may be superfoxy and unimaginably desirable, as HJNTIY repeatedly assures us. But sometimes contemplating our wonderful selves gets old. And that's when we drum up some drama.

Maybe I'm just weakly reassuring myself that all those rakes out there really did love me. But I'd like to point out that "Sex and the City" ended with its heroine, Carrie, in the safely adoring embrace of one Mr. Big -- a man who spent six seasons illustrating nearly every one of HJNTIY's chapter headings. He broke up with her (repeatedly), did not call, married someone else, had sex with other people, didn't want to marry her, disappeared, was "totally important and busy," and was a selfish jerk, bully, and really big freak. Big told Carrie in as many cowardly ways as he could conceive of that he was totally Just. Not. That. Into. Her.

And yet...

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