Why Men Don't Call

by Nicholas Allen — June 21, 2007

Most of the women I know have, at one time or another, raised their perfectly manicured fists to the heavens, demanding to know: "Why doesn't he call?!" They have a point. We say we'll call and then we don't. I've heard some of the theories women have put forth to explain this departure from the rules of common courtesy--and they're usually some variation on the following: "He's afraid of intimacy. He's afraid to open himself up to me. He's afraid of how 'real' this could become. I gave off weird signals, and now he's not sure how I feel and he's afraid if he calls that I might reject him. He realizes that I'm a challenge and he's engaging in a complex courtship game strategically designed to raise my level of interest."

Allow me to disabuse you of some of these notions.

Let me first say on behalf of us men that--we ain't all that complex. I can't tell you how many times over the years a woman has asked me what I was thinking, much to my mortification. I say "mortification" because my stream of consciousness at any given moment is fairly clear and shallow. When asked this question, what I'm usually thinking is something like, "This movie is really good. This recliner is really comfortable. That actress's breasts are really great." From sheer embarrassment, I used to try to dress my thoughts up and respond with something like, "I was thinking about the worsening plight of agrarian-based economies in sub-Saharan Africa." But that felt dishonest and so I stopped doing it. My last girlfriend (who, lord love her, never once asked what I was thinking) used to say that I was a man who combined depth of feeling with a remarkable simplicity of character. This, she claimed, was her favorite thing about me. She didn't want complexity, and I didn't have it to offer. All she wanted was a guy who said what he was feeling only when necessary, and didn't make her play a lot of guessing games "about the relationship" the rest of the time. You have to admire a woman who sets realistic, attainable goals.

It's not that men aren't thinkers; it's that, by and large, we're not relationship thinkers. So there's no need to go the long way around when trying to figure out why we've stopped calling. If we're not calling, it's because we don't want to call. We're not sitting back and waiting to see if you'll come after us. Men aren't suited--by nature or conditioning--to sit back and wait to see if what we want will come after us. When we want a woman, we call her. When we don't, we don't. If we said we'd call and then never did, it's because we didn't mean it when we said it. We were just looking for the polite thing to say at the end of the evening, because we're cowards when it comes to the possibility of women yelling at us. We'd sooner lie than have a woman question us as to why we're not interested in pursuing things further. Chances are pretty good that we don't even know why. We just know on some gut, intuitive level that not calling seems like a more appealing prospect than calling.

For the record, I have made a policy of never saying I'll call if I'm not going to, although it can be really tough to look for something to say after the "good-nights" have been exchanged, when the woman you're with is clearly waiting for you to say, "We'll have to do this again sometime. I'll call you."

But I'm speaking in broad generalities here. Ladies, don't beat your heads against the brick wall of the male psyche (bricks being like rocks in this case, which are generally what our heads are filled with when it comes to women). Move on to the next guy, who will, even though he can't quite articulate what it is about you that's so damn appealing, know simply that he always wants to call--without any prompting.

Nicholas Allen is a writer and columnist based in Manhattan. To read all of his blogs, click here.