I've been talking to a friend who's just found out that the guy she's been interested in the last few months (and who had made some moves on her over the weekend) wishes to keep their relationship platonic due to him being in the air force and having to leave town in a couple months. She took it hard, having developed some pretty heavy feelings for the dude.
While I sympathize with her, as being rejected is no easy feat, I can't help wondering if I'm approaching this sort of situation the wrong way.
We've all been in a situation where someone we're interested in may not necessarily be on the same level as us. As much as it hurts and regardless of how many times we tell them about our true feelings, it won't necessarily change their mind or how they feel about the situation. It isn't selfish. It's just what it is.
We've all probably been in the reverse situation too--where someone was very much interested in us, but we simply didn't feel the same way... or didn't feel it was a good idea to get into a relationship at the time.
She was a bit hurt that he decided this on his own without really discussing with her how she may feel about the situation. She knows she couldn't change his mind, but I guess she wanted to at least let her feelings be known.
I remember when I was first broken up with, I was upset that he didn't talk to me about it. It seemed very out of the blue too. He simply decided that we were no more and what do you say to that? If a mind's been made up, it's awfully hard to change.
I think what's a strange concept to get around is the idea that the other person can end a potential source of happiness just like that and depending on the relationship, you may not ever know why. It could be out of left field or a long time coming, but it could happen. That's a very scary thing to accept walking into the dating game, I think.
The way I see it, it's just another experience. If it were me, I'd simply remember that I've liked people in the past and have gotten over them in the past and nothing would stop me from doing the same now. I wouldn't necessarily view it as a be all end, all kind of thing--regardless of how much I would have liked the guy.
I guess what I want to know is, how do you cope with these sorts of situations--be it unrequited love, rejection, or break ups? What are your views on them?
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Comments (14)
You do the same thing with unrequited love as you would do with an illness. Treat yourself to a good time, keep yourself as active as possible, and baby yourself a bit more now and then until you feel better. Lots of good food and episodes of Star Trek TNG are a must.
Just view it as one more obstacle to get over. If you dwell on it too much, you risk magnifying its effect on you and prolonging the pain.
i've been in situations like your friend too and the best thing to do is just move on. he's not going to change his mind even if she sticks around longer and it wont be a healthy relationship.
feat--An achievement that requires great courage, skill, or strength.
Being rejected is probably a very easy feat. Lots of people get rejected. It probably requires little to no effort. Getting over rejection and walking away from it unscathed, on the other hand, is no easy feat.
Getting dumped is way better than having to dump someone. When someone breaks up with me, it's on them. They made the decision. I never think about them at all. Unfortunately, most of the time, I'm the one who has to end it. It sucks. You always have to wonder if you made the right choice, and sometimes they even invade my dreams and the next day I can't get them out of my head.
As far as getting rejected, I usually only want people I know I can get. Fighting above your weight class will get you knocked out. I'm not the type of guy a girl looks across the bar at and says to herself, "Oh yeah, I'm fucking him tonight." So I never look for girls at bars or clubs. I'm the type of guy you date and when people ask, "How did you end up with him?", you never really have an answer. "I'm the hand up the skirt of the Mona Lisa. They never see me coming." Then again, when rejection does happen, I'm confident enough to brush it off and deal with it. There are way too many people on the planet to let one not wanting you hurt for too long.
@QuantumStorm@xanga - Netflix is your friend :)
Ok, so first of all, we need to separate everything. Unrequited love is not a crush that rejects you, because unrequited love lasts for a significant time after that, and it continues to hurt the whole time. You love someone and know they don't love you back; they don't even consider you worth a try. Also, being rejected and being broken up with are not the same; while they might have similar effects on some people, I would wager for most the results are very different and the options for dealing with it are different.
I had an unrequited crush for over 4 years, but can give no advice on getting over it because we ended up dating in the end (almost 9 mos now). Maybe eliminating him from my life completely would have helped, but I'm not really sure of that. I would have always wondered. Toward the end, I just accepted that I would probably love him forever and never get what I wanted. I accepted that loving someone doesn't have to mean waiting for them, or not loving someone else...you can just...love. It's hard to explain, but there it is. Then again, I never got to the 'loving someone else' part, so I don't know how true this is.
Rejection is different than a breakup; I think a breakup is easier to get over. In a breakup, you can look back and say, "we tried it, and these things didn't work." You can find at least a few specific things to hold on to. You have information. Rejection is someone else deciding for you that things won't work, when you disagree. Now, sometimes, it can be "No, because I'm just not feeling attracted to you that way," which is hard to argue with. But if it's situational rather than preferential, like "I won't be able to give you the attention you deserve because of my job," that's predicting the future and assuming the other party's wishes, which frankly is kind of insulting, but mostly unhelpful. Because the rejectee is thinking "I don't need that much attention!" but it's a he-said-she-said and there's no real way to change the rejector's mind. Which is when you can get unrequited love. When you can't get over them, because there's nothing wrong, except they never gave you a chance.
As for your friend... yes, getting over him ASAP is probably her best (least painful) bet. But it may not be impossible to change his mind, although I can't say exactly how. Perhaps explicitly changing expectations...trying it for the few months with no commitment after. Perhaps sticking with the platonic relationship and seeing where it goes. There's no guarantees, of course, but if there's mutual attraction and you never even TRY, I think that's a waste of a good possibility.
@forsakenchild@xanga - I feel that a lot of people/culture as a whole don't understand that breaking up with someone or rejecting them is often almost as hard as being on the other side. :/
right around the time of my period, sometimes I think about past unrequited loves, get sad and cry. I think I just had too much water retention, so my mind and body urged me to think of depressing things that I usually don't think about, so I cry and let the water out, but I don't think I'll become less bloated on my body from the few droplets of tears from that needle hole in my eye aka tear duct
but later I also feel horny, so I get orgasms and then feel all better again
annihilate the unrequited love with orgasms
if it is a fresh breakup, I either get really mad or cry really hard. I used to cry. now I get mad
then I get all cocky and think, psha! his loss
I'll find somebody else even better than him and I do
I dunno. I get rejected pretty often. It's not really the worst thing in the world. Have a few - few - drinks, read something on stoicism or ethics, watch a relatively stiff and distant foreign movie, and think about starting/returning to a meaningful project. More or less, it's a game of adding value when everything otherwise seems empty and hollowed out. (And, of course, intentionally forgetting that, really, it's a game of burning out the clock, too. Time doesn't heal all things, but it certainly helps.)
There is always someone hotter the next crush over, that's a fact! lol
They all suck. I think the best thing to do in these situations is to maintain perspective (this isn't the end of the world) and use it as an opportunity to start focusing on yourself again (pedicures, anyone?).
Take up running, buy a pint of ice cream & invest in instant netflix. ;]
feelin' this right now. Fell really hard for someone with a girlfriend.
Ah, I know this feeling all too well. It stings at first but in the big picture, rejection is the universe's present for the future. Perhaps someone amazing, to reciprocate the same love and appreciate your worth, is yet to be met. Or maybe the time just isn't right.
It's a matter of freeing yourself from the dejection of rejection (ooh a rhyme) to find him/her.