QUESTION: "Dear Ian:

I went out on a few dates with this guy that I thought I wasn’t really into, and now he’s not calling and I can’t stop thinking about him. Should I call?"

ANSWER: As the Rolling Stones sang, “You can’t always get what you want.” And as anyone who has been run ragged on the dismal dating treadmill knows it’s far, far worse when you can’t even get what you didn’t want in the first place!

Sure you were never that into him, but that doesn’t mean you didn’t need him to be into you. After all, who doesn’t want to be wanted?

But now that “loser” has pulled the old fisherman “catch and release,” and you’re, well, “floundering.”
And as you wait for the phone to ring, you can’t help but wonder what you did wrong: was it the piece of salad stuck between your teeth during dinner? Did those jeans make you look fat? Was it the fact that during sex you called out “Enrique” when his name is Henry? Or maybe while you were busy getting your ego stroked he was stroking all that and more and got what he wanted out of the bargain.

Or maybe quite possibly he got the message that you weren’t really that into him. We guys may look oblivious, but even the worst of us can read the dating-signals and employ a bit of ESP – Ego Superiority Perception.

You’ll never know for sure unless you call, but your friends will have your head – after all, why the hell should you call that loser?

But is he really such a loser?As a friend of mine recently remarked, “Dating should be like buying art: stay open-minded while you shop and wait to be struck by the uniqueness of a piece that you want to frame. But the problem is that so many of us go about it in reverse. We walk around with a frame, trying to find a piece that will fit.”

So maybe you found a piece of art, but didn’t trust your gut because he was a bit on the surreal side and your taste tends towards the romantic. Or maybe you listened to the opinions of your friends. But remember: at one time most art-snobs thought that Van Gogh was worthless. Are your friends dating-snobs?

You’ll only know if you pick up that phone, even though most advice books will tell you not to.
I say go for it. But before you do, consider what the French writer George Sand wrote, “Vanity is the quicksand of reason.” Are you about to step into a whole mess of the stuff? Just as Socrates said that an unexamined life is not worth living, so too is an unexamined relationship not worth rekindling.
So think about your motives and then make the decision. Maybe he is an overlooked piece of art or maybe in the end it doesn’t matter who dumped who – a cheap forgery of love is still a phony no matter how you slice it.

Yes, it’s true you can’t always get what you want, or even what you don’t want for that matter, but like the Stones said, “if you try some time, you might just find you’ll get what you need.”