And now it's time for another fun-filled guest blog! This one comes from my very good friend Pete. Pete is one of those really great guys. I love him dearly, pullovers and all! I would very much like to take Pete shopping : ) that's besides the point. Anyway Pete is also one of those guys that always seems unfazed by the dating scene. I make such a big deal out of things and he remains so Zen and Bhudda like...until I read this...

To make sure that you interpret this right, let me make it clear upfront that I'm a guy, a friend of Not Into You, and a creative type in his mid-20s. This story is completely true, save the names.

Last spring, I was a ways into a long dry spell of singledom. I'm not exactly the go-out-and-seek type, and I hadn't had a chance encounter with anyone who stirred me up. Of course, if this night wasn't the exception, I wouldn't be writing about it.

It was a party thrown by a friend, Michelle, of an acquaintance, Sam. I might not have gone because the connection was so tenuous, but it was right near my apartment in a remote corner of the city. I had only met Michelle once while hanging out with Sam, and thought she was a nice girl. Close to my age, a short, shy biology researcher. Didn't seem to be much to write home about, but maybe once we got to know each other better...

The first thing Michelle does at the party is accidentally spray red wine all over my shirt as she pops the cork. It's a perfect Meet Cute. (I strip to soak the shirt, but I still have an undershirt on.) Also ranking on the cute-o-meter is a friend of Sam and Michelle, whom I dub Susan. Susan talks to me a lot. She's a sweet girl, but she is clearly trying very hard to dress to impress in a way that looks insincere. In short, no one here really interests me yet romantically, which is par for course with my expectations.

Oh, there's a hot girl about my age over there talking in a group, too, but she looks out of my league.

An hour or so later I'm meeting this last girl, Maria, and suddenly, getting to know her, she's not nearly as condescending or full or herself as I thought she would be. In fact, she's mature, sincere, smart, cultured. Suddenly the romance-o-meter awakens. I had gone so long without feeling infatuated that it was like water through the driest, most rusty of pipes. This girl -- an Italian, mind you -- was poised, articulate, and most remarkably, hanging onto my every word and actually listening to my views and questions. In New York for a journalism program on scholarship, she's worked already on papers across Europe, going places and seeing things I've only read about. She seems like everything I aspire to, complementing my strengths like the perfect running mate. And she's sure acting like she's into me.

My sense of self turns inside out; the future weeks and months tip over and realign: time for Relationship Mode to finally return and send its much-needed ripples out in every direction, recasting my life in a welcome new mold.

Maria asks if I want to leave with her to go to another party to see some different friends of hers. I feel bad about leaving everyone -- Michelle, especially -- but of course I agree, and Sam decides to go too. She's not very patient, though, bugging me as I try to say farewell to the people I met.

It's raining outside, hard. A ferocious surprise evening thunderstorm. I'm the only one with an umbrella, so for the four blocks to the subway, there we are, Maria and I, huddled close and jumping over puddles in sync like partners in a potato sack race.

She glitters in the rain.

We reach the stairs to the subway, but for some reason her subway card keeps returning PLEASE SWIPE AGAIN and AGAIN. There's a train coming. Without flinching, she suddenly jumps the turnstile. I look, and it seems the token booth man didn't see. I swipe and we all run onto the train. Maria and I sit adjacent, and I gently scold her for doing something punishable by arrest. Her eyes open wide: she somehow didn't know. I nod. And suddenly, there we are, our eyes locked and nary a foot apart. It was one of those moments I make fun of in my writing for being such a cliche: the Eternal Stare. Her eyes were so healthy, the deep, dark brown matching the soaking wet hair. She had the cutest water droplets all over her nose. This is it, I think -- the start of something good. I smile subtly, and she replies in kind.

When we get back on the street, the rain has lightened, and she runs ahead to the party. Sam and I talk about the turnstile incident. Then he says, "you shouldn't be interested in her, you know, she has a boyfriend."

The only answer I can give is demanded by my reflexes. "I'm not interested in her." I'm a pretty closed person emotionally, and Sam isn't really a friend. I'm also the monogamous kind.

A few seconds later, as Maria dives deep into the new party, it dawns on me that I am in the middle of being ditched. The water drains back out of the pipes. I'm hollow once more.

Sam and I don't know a soul at this party, and Maria is nowhere to be found to help us out. The people here are much drunker than us, and clearly making fun of us from afar. We spend about half an hour complaining about girls in a corner. I don't talk about Maria, but we both agree that we've been had, and we would much rather be back with Michelle, Susan and the others.

After an hour we leave. Maria is at the door saying farewell to the people leaving. She looks at me quizzically as though to ask, "why so soon?" But it's not enough to change my mind.

It dawns on me that Maria is a vixen. That by leaving the first party super-early in order to follow the hottest girl out the door, I myself did the first ditching of the evening. I've never done anything like it; I'm hypersensitive to the feelings of others. I mean, Maria struck me with her mind, so it's embarrassing that she's so hot, because it has made me look incredibly shallow. But I knew what I was doing when I left. It was a calculated risk. For the first time in my life, I ditched some friends for a woman. That it backfired so horribly made me feel like fortune's fool: this is EXACTLY why I take so few chances in love, and that, in turn, is why I am still single.

I tell Sam I want to go back to Michelle's party. He gives the idea a cool reception. It would be even ruder to leave and return, he says, than to just leave. He convinces me and we go back on the subway to head home. We resume our conversation about girls, and twice in the space of ten minutes, he brings up Susan and asks me what I thought of her for a girlfriend. "No one at that party really interested me," I lie. I express more regret about leaving the party, and he speaks very eloquently about why I shouldn't. It makes me more of a character, he says. People are going to love me for being who I am, not for being an ethically perfect superhero. Sure, sometimes I will screw up, but my mistakes make me as endearing as my virtues.

Reflecting on this later, I have trouble deciding for myself whether I regret going with Maria. Sure, knowing what I know now, the answer is obvious. But I have to give my former self some leeway and answer "no." To have a policy of smiting sparks as promising as those when they come up is more dangerous in the long run than occasionally ditching some friends whom I don't know that well. I just have to learn to spot the vixens.

Here's the point: I know something about the way girls compete, and especially the resentment nice girls have to the vixens who seduce the guys away. But what amazes me is how they act as though 100% of the responsibility is on the vixens, as though men are hormone-driven automata with no brains between their pituitary glands and their feet. This is extremely condescending-- and don't dare come back with "but it's true!" We're not dogs choosing between two chew toys. I hope this story has shed some light on when and why guys need to take responsibility for their own actions. Love us for our virtues and our faults together.