In wrongful pursuit of Mr. Right

If this year’s movies are any indication, being single has some pretty nasty side effects. In women, as Bridget Jones can attest, it’s been known to cause bloating, moodiness, inability to put on a matching outfit, inability to properly apply makeup and, should a relationship ever occur, full-blown dementia. In men, judging by Jude Law’s uber-cad in “Alfie” and the nearly deranged buddies Jack and Miles in “Sideways,” singleness appears to be a study in chain smoking, alcoholism and pathological lying.

No surprise, then, that as singleness lobbies for its own entry in the DSM IV, a new self-help book about dating has become a national bestseller: “He’s Just Not That Into You,” which bills itself as “the no-excuses truth to understanding guys.” Dominating girl talk in tapas bars all over America, it’s well on its way to becoming a national phenomenon. More than 1.2 million copies are in print and film rights were purchased by New Line Cinema.

What is less expected, though, is that the book, written by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo, a former consultant and a writer, respectively, on “Sex and the City,” turns out to be not just another guerrilla dating guide but a surprisingly fascinating addition to the cultural canon of single, urban life.

Post-feminist alarmism over single women’s prospects began, arguably, with the now-debunked 1986 study asserting that a woman over 40 had a greater chance of being killed by a terrorist than of getting married, and reared up again in 1995 with the shrill husband-finding guide “The Rules.” But the genre found livelier footing on “Sex and the City,” and now there’s “He’s Just Not That Into You,” which takes its premise from an episode of that program.

The book’s popularity is less a function of its literary value -- it’s essentially an extended women’s magazine article -- than of the big, complicated question it poses (albeit indirectly) to single women: namely, in a world in which “there aren’t that many good men around,” how does one find love while maintaining her dignity? To get at the answer, “He’s Just Not That Into You” poses a series of more prosaic questions, along the lines of “Why don’t guys call when they say they will?”

Contrary to popular female opinion (read: hopefulness), men who demonstrate less than total willingness to ask for dates, discuss the future and have frequent sex do so not because they’re busy/shy/cautious/impotent but because they’re “just not that into you.” The proper response: Move on and don’t look back. According to Behrendt, a self-described former cad, “men would rather lose an arm out a city bus window than tell you, ‘You’re not the one.’ ”

An overstatement, perhaps, but brilliant in its simplicity. “He’s Just Not That Into You” does for today’s professional, urban women what “The Rules” did for marriage-obsessed shrews (many of whom were also professional, urban women). By reminding women how much men love a challenge -- “We like not knowing if we can catch you,” writes Behrendt -- it reconfigures passivity into empowerment. That may be an age-old romantic principle, but for the millions of women who, as Tuccillo writes, were “brought up to believe that hard work and good planning are the keys to making your dreams come true,” sitting around and waiting to be asked out is hardly a natural inclination. After 30 years of a hard-driving, “you go, girl” edict applied to everything from corporate ladder climbing to dating, the collective release offered by “He’s Just Not That Into You” is enormous. Even Oprah Winfrey, whose Sept. 28 segment on the book created such a sensation that the publisher had to rush to print more copies, proclaimed it a tool of liberation.

Behrendt positions himself as a well-meaning older brother -- “It’s my responsibility to tell you who we really are.” But with his proselytizing braggadocio, he’s really more of a faith healer, with the 41-year-old, attractive, intelligent and never-married Tuccillo functioning as spiritual witness. Amid Behrendt’s take-no-prisoners didacticisms -- “the word ‘busy’ is a load of crap,” “if you have to pursue, then nine times out of 10, he’s just not that into you” -- Tuccillo placates shell-shocked readers with sisterly testimonials. “Since I’ve been implementing Greg’s handy-dandy ‘he’s just not that into you’ philosophy, I’ve been feeling surprisingly more powerful,” she writes. “Because if men are asking you out ... then you are the one in control.”

That point is more a Homer Simpson-esque “d’oh” than an Oprah “aha” moment. The truth is, most women know deep down that asking out a guy is pretty much the equivalent of auditioning to be the understudy. Most women also know that cheating is, like, a bad sign.

But Behrendt and Tuccillo may have written the literary equivalent of bottled water. If nothing else, “He’s Just Not That Into You” is an ingenious packaging strategy for an ostensibly abundant resource (basic human logic) whose purity has suddenly been called into question. But regardless of how long “He’s Just Not That Into You” can maintain its yoga-like popularity, it’s possible that single people might be inching toward some kind of collective pride. Even Bridget Jones manages in her latest film to dispatch with the toxic Daniel Cleaver. And most of Alfie’s women, for their parts, break up with him before suffering too many indignities. It’s as if these characters have begun to absorb Behrendt and Tuccillo’s overarching point, which is that it’s better to be alone (possibly even forever) than stuck in a bad relationship. “My only job is to be as happy as I can be about my life and to lead as full and eventful a life as I can,” Tuccillo writes.

That’s a pretty revolutionary statement in a society so deeply rooted in monogamous couplehood and nuclear families. And therein lies the undercurrent of radicalism. “He’s Just Not That Into You” is dark at times, and it may be this overdue recognition of the unfairness of life and the mysterious, illogical ways of the heart, that draws so many women to the book. “I think some of those people who are single and ready to have love in their lives are going to get cancer and die,” admits Tuccillo, “or just never find love with a good man and maybe just settle.”

The delicious irony of “He’s Just Not That Into You” is that most of what’s smart about it seems to be purely accidental. The book is ultimately a sneak attack against the conventional tactics of modern dating, a disavowal of the snare-a-guy-at-any-cost mentality generated by decades of “man shortage” hyperbole.

That might not sound like a formula for selling millions of copies until you consider that U.S. Census figures released this month show that at age 34 nearly a quarter of women and a third of men have never been married, a fourfold increase from 1970. So it makes sense that the best dating guide here is an antidating guide. At the very least, it gives women something new to overanalyze over martinis and spring rolls. Men, for their part, can thank Behrendt for doing the dirty work that might otherwise cost them their arms out of city bus windows. We can all be grateful for that.