The hours tick by. You wonder why you haven’t gotten a text. Is that person with someone else? Even if that’s true, you tell yourself that’s totally fine. After all, you guys are not dating.

At 10 p.m., you get a text: ‘What’s up?’

You wait a little before responding. You don’t want to seem like you’ve been waiting all night for it. This is your care-free, no strings attached, ‘we’re just friends’ hookup — no expectations, no emotions. I mean, who wants emotions? But you can’t seem to suppress them.

‘As much as we would like to think that we can leave our emotions at the bedroom door as easily as we take off our underwear, we’re just fooling ourselves,’ said Dr. Joseph Fanelli, professor of MFT 425: ‘Lust, Love and Relationships.’

So you text back and soon, you get a knock on your apartment door.

I’ve been in this situation before. I kept hooking up with someone even though I knew the feelings were not mutual. I told myself that if we kept seeing each other, things might change. Maybe he would change.

‘I think people feel that you can convince someone else you’re worth dating if you continue to hook up with them,’ said M, a senior who said that she has been on both ends of the spectrum. She admits it feels awful to want someone to like you so much that you allow yourself to be treated poorly. However, when the positions are flipped, you don’t feel guilty because, according to you, you’ve made your intentions very clear.

Fanelli points out that people need to feel a sense of worth in their relationships. We need to have a deep self-belief that we can sustain a meaningful, loving interpersonal relationship. Without this, we end up letting people use us and treat us badly, he said.

It sucks to be on the receiving end of this sticky situation (believe me), but I understand the other side’s point of view. Let’s say that person’s mindset is: ‘I made it clear that I don’t want a relationship. I’m only looking for a hookup.’ Then you can’t blame this person for his or her actions. You shouldn’t expect that person to develop deeper feelings for you. Sometimes you just have to move on.

But I can do it, you say. I can do ‘no strings attached.’ Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake did it in ‘Friends with Benefits,’ and they even managed to fall in love at the end.

But that was a movie. Life is not a fairytale in which your best friend becomes your friend with benefits and then turns into your prince charming. In real life, he’s just not that into you.

Rita Kokshanian is a senior magazine journalism major. Her column appears every Thursday. She can be reached at rhkoksha@syr.edu. 

Published on September 14, 2011 at 12:00 pm