So I met a guy on a dating site, we meet in person, he is great, but he just wants to be friends. That’s cool with me…. Sort of. Over the course of about a month, we have grown very close. He confides in me and I in him. We hang out and talk on the phone like friends do. I’ve come to realize however that, I really like him and want more. So I innocently drop hints, and offer reminders that I am available whenever he wants to take a chance with me. He hardly ever takes the bait, and when he does, he re-draws that line of friendship and vows never to cross it. This seems ok right. We’ve all been there before, liking someone that really only sees us as a friend. There is nothing unhealthy about this in anyway. We can’t always have what we want, and, because he is a great person, it would be my loss to deny him my friendship over what is probably fleeting infatuation. Everything will be fine….right?
WRONG!!!! DEAD WRONG!!! Over the last month, I have felt defeated, lonely, “ugly” and “unwanted”! In other words, I feel like I have been rejected by the entire world. An exaggerated statement obviously, because I have not met the entire world, but you understand the depth of my feelings of rejection.
Think of all the opportunities people have to reject you: on the playground in elementary school, not making the team, not being accepted by the cool crowd, your first breakup, the first job you didn’t get, or the one you were let go from. Life, if lived properly, is full of opportunities to be rejected. In fact, I’m sure I could ask any one of you, and you could describe in great detail the first time you ever experienced rejection. You might ask yourself, if everyone experiences rejection, why is it such a big deal to me? I can’t speak for everyone, but for me, basic rejection cuts extremely deep.
I take rejection personally no matter how it comes. Losing a job says to me, “you aren’t smart enough,” or “talented enough.” Being friend zoned, “ you are great, but still not good enough for me.” Being rejected makes me feel like something is wrong with me as a whole. Like I am missing some vital piece of myself that would make me more acceptable to the world. Throughout my life I have prayed to fit in with, be accepted by, or approved for so many “normal” things. So often I was made to feel like I was inadequate, not by anything they actually said, but by their saying, “no”, “not today”, “try again”, or “not right now”.
My obvious solution would be to stop placing myself in situations to be rejected. Stop trying out for teams, stop going on dates, stop trying to fit in, stop making new friends. I can’t feel rejected if I never give anyone the opportunity to reject me again. But what does that mean, realistically? It means isolation, loneliness, hopelessness, more pain. To keep from being rejected, I have to reject everything and anything that can hurt me. That’s everything, including my own children. To never be rejected, also means never allowing myself to be kissed by a man who could love me just because he might not right in that moment. It means not making new friends because we could one day have a falling out and no longer be friends. To not be rejected, I must first analyze the potential for rejection in every situation. Think about it, what thing in life doesn’t offer the potential for rejection? Let me know what you come up with…seriously.
The hardest part, I believe, about no longer experiencing rejection is that Hope becomes futile. Let’s try to make this positive. To guarantee no rejection, means you no longer need to hope for anything. You would fit in everywhere, acceptance would be given freely. Awesome, right? Right! But not the world we live in. Instead, in order to not experience rejection, you have to live in this world without hope. It means no longer hoping for love, peace, the end of hunger, abuse, or even hope for a cure for cancer. A world, this world, without Hope? Does that scare you? It terrifies me. I am more afraid of a world without hope than I am a world full of rejection. Hopelessness leads to despair, despair to desperation, desperation to devastation. A topic for another day. Hope has its two sides. One side you get exactly what you were hoping for and, if you’re a believer, “exceedingly and abundantly above all you could ask or think.” The other side of that, you get nothing; not just nothing, but nothing, and then a sense of loss. A Loss dangerously close to grief, because you’ve nurtured your hope, spent time with it. Once you get that rejection letter, severance package, or that “let’s just be friends” text, whatever hope you may have had, is… gone. In some instances, that hope has to die. There is a level of mourning that I go through each time I experience rejection.
Despite the number if times I’ve been dumped, friend zoned, ghosted, lied to, stood up, or mislead, I still go on dates, check every notification on my dating apps, and allow my heart to stay ready to receive the love it truly desires. Every time the date goes awry, or I get that dreaded text, I mourn the loss. The loss of hope, that feeling that there is yet another person who doesn’t want me. In comes the guy I mentioned earlier. He is pretty awesome, I enjoy and value his friendship, but every now and then the thought of him makes me sad. Sometimes, I get frustrated hearing him discuss a failed relationship or the desire to have someone to love him and support him. I get angry because I’m right here, ready, willing, and able to be everything he needs. I pay attention to everything he says, his likes and dislikes, what frustrates him, what turns him on… but he doesn’t see me. He only wants me to be his friend. In my head he rejects me, all of me, everything, good or bad about me, because he doesn’t want to love me romantically. Now he lets it be known that he values our friendship, but I hear, “you aren’t good enough to be my woman”.
After a full day of crying and wallowing, he tells me to snap out of it. He points out that he has spent the whole day answering my calls and responding to my texts, making sure I was ok, and I wasn’t showing him an ounce of appreciation for it. I apologized, explained that I was so very grateful for his friendship, then I spent the night trying to figure out why I had been so upset with him specifically. We’d been friends for a month, the original rejection happened almost immediately after we met. Why was I still hurting?
Now I’m not a professional, but here is what I have come to believe. By remaining friends with him, I set him up to become a trigger. I accepted his friendship —— prematurely, but I accepted it. I continued to flirt with him, flirt back when he flirted with me, and kept all the doors and windows open to the part of my heart that would welcome a romantic relationship with him. By never closing the door to that place, I continued to open myself up to be rejected by him. By opening myself up to the repeated rejection from him, I allowed him to become a representation of every rejection I had ever felt. Being around him, talking to him, thinking of him, was a constant loop of all the rejection I’ve felt over many, many years. Totally unfair to him, because he had always been honest about his position. Totally unfair to him, because he had been a great friend to me. So I had to be honest with him. He explained that if being his friend was a “trigger”, he’d understand if I didn’t want to be friends any longer. In that moment, I had to choose: 1) lose a great friendship, avoid the trigger, suppress rather than deal with the negative feeling he triggers, or 2) keep what has been a mutually beneficial friendship, accept that he may be a trigger, but not the problem, and deal with and correct the negative emotions. I am choosing option 2.
Going forward, I have to close the door. Accept that his rejection is set in stone. Accept that his rejection, is about him, not me. Accept that his friendship could very well be more valuable than romantic involvement. Most of all, accept that I cannot change his choice, no matter how “good” I am, only he can change his mind. I have to try to understand his point of view. I need to understand that choosing to be friends is not a rejection of me as a person. He is only rejecting romantic involvement, not me. I must spend some time trying to gain a better understanding of the why of my “rejected” spirit.
How do you handle rejection? Is it a flesh wound or gaping hole? Is there an “object” or symbol of that rejection in your life? What are you hopeful for? Is it worth experiencing rejection?
So what’s the take away? If you are gonna be hopeful, you must recognize that you aren’t in control, therefore rejection will be an integral part of Hope. Rejection sucks, but it is necessary for growth. So stay hopeful through it. We can never lose hope that our dreams will come true. Our hopes dreams are what make life worthh living.
