if he wanted to, he would

The rule has an older form. In a 2003 episode of Sex and the City (opens in a new window), a man is asked to read a potential partner’s conduct after a date, and his answer, “he’s just not that into you,” came from Greg Behrendt, a comedian consulting on the show. Behrendt and the writer Liz Tuccillo made it a book in 2004, which became a New York Times bestseller and then a film. The advice under it is sound. Interest shows in conduct, and months spent decoding a silence are usually months spent decoding a no.

The shorter version needed no book. It trended on TikTok (opens in a new window), and in July 2022 the country singer Kylie Morgan released it as her debut single (opens in a new window) after finding that nobody had taken the title. It was certified Gold in March 2024. A rule with a chorus is difficult to argue with in a car.

Under load, the rule reads every absence as a verdict. Therapists have a name for assuming you know what someone else is thinking on little or no evidence (opens in a new window), which is mind reading, and they list it as a distortion. The rule removes the step in which anyone asks. It also runs in both directions, and the person applying it has, by the same rule, not wanted to ask.

The rule exists to stop one habit, which is explaining away someone else’s conduct. This file holds 3 of those explanations, all of them mine. The third was on July 15, when I talked myself past a disappointment on the grounds that I had not given her anything, against $1,257.80 already spent and 7 reservations. Applied to this file, the rule returns a verdict on the first form, and I have filed 10 more.