I think it’s just human nature though.

That’s about right. Dostoevsky once observed that “man is a mystery” and you could spend your whole life trying to figure it and never succeed. Some years ago I ran into a guy who I had known slightly. For some reason he started telling me the story of his life. We were sitting in the space in front of a church. Said his wife had left him. I asked why, since he wanted to talk about it. “She told me,” he says, “that I had come home every night at 6:30 pm without fail. That I gave her the entire paycheck. That I went to sleep each night at 10 pm.” “And the problem was?” I asked, waiting for the punchline. “And problem she said was that it was like being married to a corpse and she was leaving me.”

But it’s not a simple as being “interesting”. There’s a wavelength you’ve got to get on. Years ago, before I was married, I was often in long conversations with ladies and then realized, hours later, that I had missed the whole point of the conversation. There was some point I couldn’t grasp. And thing was, it seemed so obvious to the ladies. I think the most exasperating thing a person can hear is the reproof that “you just don’t get it” even when you’re trying to get it. Now there are some guys who are naturals. They can tune in and hold the signal even when they don’t actually give a damn. And there are some guys who give a damn and live out their lives grasping in futile effort at a point they never quite seem to catch, like a man trying to grab a fly that’s always too fast for him.

And it’s nobody’s fault really. If I could go back to that guy I met who told me about his wife, I’d say something like, “buddy what can I tell you?” Sometimes life hands you a situation that will forever remain a mystery, like the alien monolith in Kubrick’s 2001. People like Don Draper? If you’re not him, don’t worry about it.