This One Simple Test Will Reveal If He Sees Your Worth — Or If He's Just There To Waste Your Time
Men who plays games are not worth your time.
Nartan Buyukyil | Unsplash On Sex and the City, Jack Berger told Miranda Hobbs that the reason her date hasn’t called her is that “he’s just not that into you.” This phrase would spawn a subsequent book and movie. This phrase, while entertaining within the weekly episode of Sex And The City, did not make an imprint on my brain.
It would be a decade before that tiny grain of huge wisdom would re-enter my life. Divorced and dating in my late thirties brought many surprises — including flirty texting, emailing, messaging, friending, and following. So much technology, so many new ways to be rejected, and so many ways to obsess about said rejection.
Focus on observing a person's consistent actions and behaviors, which reveal their attachment style and commitment to the relationship, rather than any specific test. Research suggests that consistent actions speak louder than words, especially in matters of worth and value.
“He hasn’t answered my text in two days. What does that mean? Should I text him again or wait? Why does he text “XOXOXO” but never make a date? How come he ‘friended’ me but never calls?
Here's the one simple test that will reveal if he's worth your time: If the person you’re considering dating, loving, and spending your life with doesn’t email, call, or text back, that person is not interested.
fizkes / Shutterstock
If that person doesn’t make an actual date and offers false promises and empty compliments, they aren’t saying “Yes. Flirting, dating, and texting can be fun, but if you’re spending time evaluating and trying to figure out what it all means, it likely means something to only one of you.
And that one is you. Attraction is both complicated and perfectly simple. When you meet someone who attracts your mind, you make a first date. When your body doesn’t respond as your mind did, you probably don’t make a second.
If you meet at a club and physically all is good, but in the days that follow, their personality irks you, lust has gone bust, so you ignore their bings, and their texts are left unanswered.
When you meet someone who attracts your mind, heart, and body, you make actual dates, return texts, and even pick up the phone and place calls.
Games once entertained seem wasteful, silly, and utterly useless. Your intention is unmistakable. You say, “Yes.” Wouldn’t it be great if there were no games? Yes. And no. It would save a lot of time.
But, it’s easier and usually more compassionate to avoid and evade rather than tell someone that they aren’t what you are looking for, that they don’t do it for you, that it be mind, heart, or body, you are not attracted to them.
Rachata Teyparsit / Shutterstock
We all bring so much to the table and the reasons we like or don’t like someone can be many or few. It’s hard, awkward, and at times cruel to tell someone exactly the why of why they don’t work for you.
So you ignore texts, make plans that you know you will break and you say through your actions but not your voice that you’re “just not that into them.” It’s so obvious looking back that a few flings, for their own varied reasons, told me in every way except actually telling me, that they weren’t that into me.
One such fling and I became friends after our dating never took off. In the midst of offering him some requested dating advice, I mentioned how despite all of his initial talk, he obviously wasn’t that into me.
He told me he was, but realized my ex and kids were not something he wanted to get involved with. If he had told me that at the time, I know (while I would have pretended otherwise) that deep down, being newly divorced and insecure, this bit of honesty might have been more pointed than I could bear.
At that point, my time spent deciphering his signals suited me better than his stark truth. The truth was there, albeit cloaked in mixed signals, patiently waiting for me to see it on my own. And I did.
In the midst of my very busy dating season, I met someone whose truth was laid bare. His truth was not hidden but rather put brightly under my eyes so that I could not help but see it.
This someone said “Yes” in every way from the start. His bright light allowed me to see all that had previously been dimmed.
A light shone and in its reflection was a lesson that this time, I would not forget. Recently my former fling got in touch asking for some more dating advice. He took a girl out, they had a great time; she seemed interested but is backing off, not making plans, saying she isn’t ready.
What does this mean? Is she this, does she mean that?
I laughed and told him “I’m sorry but she’s just not into you.” Resigned, he said, “Yeah, I know.”
In big ways and small, in new relationships or marriages twenty years deep, we all say “Yes” or “No” hundreds of times a day in hundreds of ways. We all deserve to be with someone who says “Yes.” Don’t settle for less.
Abby King is a writer who has been featured in Huffington Post, Scarymommy, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and more.
