He's just not that into you still hits different at 31

There is a line that has outlived every dating app, every situationship, every 3 a.m. text spiral: if he likes you, you'll know. I've deployed it like a scalpel on friends who deserved better than they were getting. I'd half-forgotten where I first absorbed it — until I rewatched He's Just Not That Into You, the 2009 rom-com that quietly rewired how an entire generation of women read romantic signals, or more accurately, stopped misreading them.

Where the whole thing actually started

The origin is messier and more interesting than most people remember. Rewind to Sex and the City, Season 6. Miranda Hobbs is tying herself in knots over a man who didn't want to come upstairs after a date. Jack Berger — possibly the most irritating boyfriend in the SATC canon — delivers the line flat, almost bored: