There has to be a reason he's just not that into you. You met him at a bar, the sparks flew a mile high and after 20 minutes of conversation and fistfuls of vodka beverages, he asked for your number. Before you could dribble off the barstool, your mind already had you strolling down a tree-lined street with his babies in tow. From your second home in the Hamptons to your retirement in St. Tropez, it was the perfect match -- except that he never called.
It's one of the mysteries of the universe, something that must be encoded in our DNA. Men smile at women, flirt with women, turn women into jelly. Then are never heard from again. Women have spent millennia trying to figure it out, and their theories cover everything from "he's not over his ex" to "he's afraid of commitment." Hate to break it to ya ladies, but you're flat-out wrong. Add this to the pile of vaguely misogynistic books that tell women they're not hot enough, smart enough or likable enough: You're the reason!
Which is why Rachel Greenwald wrote "Why He Didn't Call You Back," a fastidiously researched look that polled more than 1,000 men to find out what was most likely to stop a potential relationship dead in its tracks. The Harvard-educated marketing executive turned dating coach and matchmaker previously offered advice in "Find a Husband After 35: Using What I Learned at Harvard Business School."
Since her move from businesswoman to marriage maven, Greenwald has worked with thousands of women. Some spend as little as an hour on the phone with her, others put her on retainer and exchange as many as 10 e-mails a month in search of advice. Her hard-core followers head for Denver for one of her one-on-one workshops. So many of her clients brooded over the phantom nature of their dates that she decided to investigate.
"Living in a feedback culture, relationships are the one outlet where the only feedback we get is silence," says Greenwald, who has been married for 16 years and has three children. She spent a decade gathering her research and distilled the results into a host of feminine traits that turn men off faster than a rerun of "Sex and the City."
Here are five of the types that'll send a guy running.
1. The Boss Lady
Topping Greenwald's list is the "Boss Lady," a dominant creature who can be "argumentative, competitive, controlling, not feminine, too independent, not nurturing or some combination of the above," she says. A woman might think her personality is "persuasive, capable, street-smart, organized, modern, confident or forthright" -- but a guy thinks of her as a woman he'd rather hire than date.
"I had a busy day at work and I deal with a lot of aggressive people," one of Greenwald's subjects told her. "When she started bickering with me at dinner, it reminded me of work."
The Boss Lady competes "whether they were trying to win an unspoken contest of name-dropping about who knew more people in Manhattan, or who knew more about wine, or who got fewer hours of sleep after a late-night party, it didn't matter" writes Greenwald.
"When a woman tried to 'trump' their comments or stories, it sparked a competitive instinct rather than a romantic feeling. Guys didn't think 'How impressive!' nor did they say 'How cute, she crushed me at bowling!'
Take Tina Fey's acerbic character, Liz Lemon, on "30 Rock" as an example of the Boss Lady. Alec Baldwin's character, Jack Donaghy, tells Lemon she's "a third-wave New York feminist, college-educated, single-and-pretending-to-be-happy-about-it, overscheduled, undersexed, you buy any magazine that says 'healthy body image' on the cover and every two years you take up knitting for ... a week."
Lemon lacks femininity and fashion sense, and the men in her office assume she's a lesbian upon meeting her. She lacks basic social skills and has difficulty distinguishing between her professional behavior and her personal encounters. She might be funny, but she's still single.
2. The Blahs
If you lack enthusiasm or don't have an opinion about anything, it's time for a new, exciting game plan. "She said her iPod is always on the 'repeat' setting. She listens to the same song over and over -- boring! My parents are kind of like that. They have their routines; they only like what's familiar. I want more variety and adventure in my life," says one of the men polled by Greenwald.
"The Blah girl comes along about once a single-life year," says Adam Muggenthaler, a 27-year old film producer.
"She can be fun the night you meet her, but once you get past the 'what do you dos' and 'where are you froms,' she starts telling the same stories and agrees with everything you say in every conversation. These girls have no substance or opinions, which cancel them out in my book."
Further, if you have lots of guy friends, none of whom lust after you, Greenwald's diagnosis is a secondary disability, the "sensual blahs."
Waylon Lewis, editor-in-chief of ElephantJournal.com and a renowned ladies' man, says he's witnessed the sensual blahs firsthand. "She's wasn't a boring person, but our conversation wasn't very stimulating," he says. "I didn't see her in a romantic way."
3. The Bait and Switcher
As a professional dating coach, Greenwald's a proponent of online dating. It's fun, entertaining and requires minimal effort -- unless you spend hours Photoshopping your profile picture so you look like a distant, much hotter cousin of yours. "The Bait & Switcher" isn't who she says she is.
"For the few weeks I did online dating, there was a girl that had a great photo and a bubbly personality, but when we met for coffee, it seemed like she used a very flattering photo from a long, long time ago. And it was obvious that someone had coached her or helped write her profile" says Ross Barasch, a 26-year old entrepreneur.
If that doesn't sound like a deal-breaker to you, imagine ordering a pair of shiny red stilettos online only to discover they've arrived out of the box with some scuffs and scratches. Get it? It's OK to sell yourself, Greenwald says, just "don't oversell and temper the shock if you have a specifi c prominent issue."
4. The Park Avenue Princess
The Princess rears her haughty head when he senses that you're more concerned with how much he'll spend on you than how much he'll love you. Being a "Park Avenue Princess" sounds like a nice title to have, except when you're looking for love. Men have an extreme distaste for the money-hungry women of the world, who also tend to be high maintenance and self-centered.
A woman at Soho House "was a member, I wasn't, but I frequented the room enough to keep up," recalls Muggenthaler. "We went out three times, and each time she ran into these great-looking, single-ish guys, and they seemed to have a 'where have you been, you kind of disappeared' attitude towards her. I knew that if I didn't break it off at that moment, she'd drain me financially, socially and emotionally over a very short period of time."
Princesses are women who make men feel like they'll never be able to afford them, and lack appreciation when the dude picks up the check. These dudes tell Greenwald that "a heartfelt thank-you went a long way."
"You can't always tell right away if the girl has an agenda, but once you get to know her a little bit, you see that her priorities are out of whack or that she's a social climber," says Walter Schultz, an art director uninterested in being anybody's sugar daddy. "She would have been really disappointed if she had gotten to know me better!"
5. The Bitch in Boots
It seems obvious that being rude to your date is a no-no, but the Bitch is notorious for nasty remarks. This diva gets bent out of shape easily, and guys blame edgy and aggressive behavior for the reason they didn't follow up. Greenwald says these girls need to "lose the tone, admit your mistake, reschedule the date and be your own p.r. agent."
Lewis, 34, tells the tale of a dinner date gone south. "She picked a really embarrassing fight with me at a restaurant, and I laughed at her -- that didn't go over too well." The same girl, he says, divulged unnecessary information about her past, which Lewis says is "nice to share, but not when you barely know someone."
Greenwald encourages women to get to the second date by avoiding what she calls "landmines." By avoiding sticky subjects, the guy will call you again, and you'll go on a second date. And Greenwald advises men: "If you decide after three or four dates that this person isn't for you, at least you've given them a chance to prove themselves, and it wasn't just one thing they did on the first date that turned you off."
Getting a Second Date
These five, of course, aren't the only culprits in crimes of the heart. There's also: The Debbie Downer, whose contagious negativity makes men sick; the The Ex-Factor, who can't stop herself from talking about the past; and The Psycho-Babbler, who may have benefitted from years in therapy, but lays on the self-help talk so thick that the average guy gets shrinkage.
"Guys are really looking for one thing to start," Greenwald says. "You'd probably never guess what it is, because it sounds kind of boring. When I ask the guys what did make them call a girl, the No. 1 thing they say is, 'She was kind.'"
Greenwald's theory is "basically like attracts like. The guy looking for a kind woman understands the importance of kindness and is likely a kind person himself."
Men also admit that they like being taken by surprise. "The coolest girl I ever went out with suggested watching 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' on Valentine's Day -- very unique. It really surprised me," says one subject.
The book includes a few pages of reasons guys did end up calling a girl after a first date. There's a guy who thought it was sweet that the woman he was with wiped up spilled sugar on a Starbucks counter so the person after wouldn't have to, and Greenwald's own husband who says, "She had me at her sixth Diet Dr. Pepper" -- there are firsthand examples for women to strive after. "Men want kindness, not someone with a prickly attitude," she says. "Who wants to try and hug a porcupine?"