Ask any man, and he will most likely tell you women are complicated.Ask any woman, and she will most likely tell you that men are just too clueless to understand.

There is a famous book titled, “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.”

Whether or not we are from or reside on the same planet, there inevitably seems to be some type of communication gap, which can make dating sometimes more complicated than it needs to be.

And what better opportunity for casual dating is there than college, a magical place where abundant members of the opposite sex are constantly around and eager to hang out in just one of their many forms of procrastination.

Unfortunately, even this can get complicated. If only women came with a manual.

With fairly new released movies such as “He’s Just Not that Into You,” the complex language of dating has been exploited in the media a lot more lately. Whether references such as these are taken as a guide to dating or only as entertainment, it inevitably is taken as humorous because, though exaggerated, much of it is true.

Even with helpful tools like this movie, (and the book it was based on), the code of dating is still often misinterpreted.

Women in particular are notorious for saying one thing and meaning another.

Fortunately for you guys (and girls, to show to the men in your life), I have come up with a cheat sheet for reference after inspiration from a spam e-mail I received.

In terms of letdowns, these are some common ones to watch out for:

1. “I would like to hang out, but I have too much homework.”

This really means something more along the lines of, “I’d rather be doing homework than seeing you.”

2. “Yeah, maybe. I’ll let you know something.”

This means, “I can’t come up with a good excuse right now. I’ll get back to you when I’m feeling more creative.”

3. “No.”

This means no.

4. “Sometime.”

This means never.

5. No response.

This is what happens before we issue an actual rejection. No response means we are pretending that we simply did not receive your e-mail, text or facebook chat message in hopes that you will assume our phone or computer is messed up and just go away. Please take these as our sincerest attempts to save your feelings.

Outside of let downs, here are many other contexts where on thing can mean something else:

6. “I’m fine.”

Things are not fine. Actually, they are quite the opposite. If you hear just the word “fine” in an argument, this means you need to stop talking.

7. “Just one more minute.”

This will actually take more than 60 seconds. This could in fact take several minutes or even hours. This means, “No, I will not admit I’m running late, but I’m working on it.”

8. “Nothing.”

This almost never actually means nothing. We either just feel too tired to try explain it to you or feel like you should already understand.

9. “Don’t worry about it, I’ll do it.”

This a potentially dangerous statement and probably means you should have already done whatever it was a long time ago. Be on your toes and look for ways to help.

10. Loud sigh.

This is another nonverbal response that is means we are questioning why we bother continuing to argue about nothing. Refer to #8.

Note: In the let down column, it is in fact possible that we actually didn’t receive a text or really do have too much homework to hang out. However in these cases, we will go out of our way to let you know and attempt to make alternate plans.

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