I’m watching the movie “He’s Just Not That Into You” (while the rest o’ the fam has already gone to bed for the night). It’s a pretty good movie, but not nearly as good as the brilliantly spot-on line that inspired it – a line that my beloved pal Dr. Neighbor forced me to really hear at one point in my dating life a few years back. He was sick of seeing me waste energy on a series of rather pointless non-starter “relationships” ..over and over and over…and over. I’d cried on his shoulder one too many times, so he sprung the whole “he’s just not into you” concept onto me. In fact, he actually bought me the ridiculously fluffy-looking book, and then he hounded me until I read it.

Once I actually processed what my dear friend was trying to get across to me – forcing an unwelcome dose of tough guy-friend love into my stubbornly self-defeating romantic consciousness – I found what he was saying incredibly liberating, namely, that if a man doesn’t call you, it’s because he doesn’t want to call you. Period. The end. It’s not because “something came up” or “things got busy at work” or because his grandmother or cat or next door neighbor got sick and he had to take care of them. Nope. It’s because he just isn’t that interested. If he were interested, he would call. Even if his cat died, he would call. Even if things got insanely busy at work, he would call.

And even if he does call, and some sort of relationship does develop, this lack of genuine interest can also manifest itself in all kinds of other ways – ways for which I used to make a whole lot of excuses for various people with whom I had various levels of involvement. But the whole “he’s just not that into you” proof-test reveals all! Voila!

Sure, there are rare exceptions – sometimes the guy doesn’t call for a legitimately good reason even though he intends to – but once I stopped basing my dating life on the exceptions instead of the rule, I got better results all around. And I felt better. Stronger, Superhumanly confident in my newfound ability to avoid pointless, time-sucking hassles. Instead I could just have fun with the people who were never going to be more than fun, and I could better identify the ones who had real relationship potential.

So go ahead and make fun of me as I freely admit here that a pink-jacketed, frivolous pop-psychology book constructed around a single catch phrase from a TV show actually made a significant change in the way I related to the opposite sex. I only wish someone had given me the damn book – or at least drilled the advice into my stubborn skull – back in 1984… instead of 20 years or so later.

Since my own epiphany, I’ve handed the book out to several single friends – male and female – who clearly needed to read it. They all report having the same “aha!” moment I had (and that Miranda had in the episode of “Sex and the City” where the line made its debut). Of course, the guy friends to whom I’ve given it would probably never admit cracking the cover, but that’s okay. I can see they’ve taken the advice to heart, and that’s all that matters.

So tell me, what’s the best dating advice you ever got? And where did you get it?