Sunday, 30 December 2012
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Being Honest in a Rejection
Almost everybody, at one point or another, has been or will be on both sides of a romantic rejection. There will be times when you will be the person receiving the rejection and getting your heart broken, and there will be other times when you have to be the one to let another person down. Typically, neither position is a comfortable one: those getting rejected sometimes feel embarrassed for putting their heart on the line only to get shot down, while those who do the rejecting often feel a sense of guilt for hurting somebody’s feelings.Last year, a friend of mine found himself on the receiving end of a rejection. He was a junior in undergrad, and he was interested in a girl he had met through his friends. When he confessed his feelings to this girl, she told him that she was not interested in dating him because she did not want to date while she was still in undergrad. Although most people would choose to start dating at a younger age, her decision not to date until she was out of college was respectable, and my friend understood. A couple months later, though, that same girl became involved in a romantic relationship with another guy – and yes, she was still in undergrad.
The fact that this girl got involved in a relationship so shortly after she rejected my friend raised a lot of questions: Was she lying when she told my friend that she did not want to date while she was in undergrad? Did she only say that she did not want to date yet instead of saying something that would be more hurtful to my friend, even if the more hurtful comment was closer to the truth (e.g. “We are not compatible” or “I am not attracted to you”)? Was she, in fact, telling the truth about not wanting to date in undergrad at the time she originally said it, not anticipating that a guy would soon come along and make her change her mind? Maybe this was all a matter of bad timing. There is no way of knowing.
The moral of the story is this: if you’re going to reject somebody, do not make up lies about why you do not want to date that person. Do not tell the person you are rejecting that you are not interested at dating at this point in your life if that is not true. Do not tell the person that you are moving to Hawaii or blasting off into space soon or that you have a disease that makes you allergic to dating if you know that is a lie. Eventually, that person may catch you in the lie and become even more miserable about your rejection.
Although it may not be best to necessarily come out and say, “I don’t want to date you because you are UGLY and ANNOYING!” if you want to hurt the person’s feelings as little as possible, just make sure that the reasons you provide for rejecting the person are neither misleading nor untrue; you will be doing that person a favor down the road.
Again, I am not necessarily saying that the girl who rejected my friend purposely lied to him about why she did not want to date him because none of us know for sure. Even if it was not her intent to hurt my friend, the fact that she got into a relationship very shortly after telling him that she was not interested in dating at all does not make her look like she was being honest with him. In order to prevent as many situations like my friend's from occurring as possible, please keep this advice in mind as you find yourself having to reject a person.In your opinion, is it worse to be the person who is rejected or the person doing the rejecting? Why? Do you have any regrets about the way you have rejected a person/the reasons you gave a person for a rejection in the past?
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- From: iamnotyourgrandma
- Name: iamnotyourgrandma
- About Me: I'm 24 years old, and, as my username implies, there is a 100% chance that I am not, in fact, your grandma. I enjoy discussions about relationship ideologies and examining how a person's background/upbringing affects his/her views about how relationships work. Feel free to leave me a comment or subscribe to my site!
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Comments (28)
seriously though, do the excuses really matter anyway? everyone should pretty much get the underlying message that the person is just not that into you. it hurts, but if you just take it as that, you're much better off.
I don't particularly feel like you owe the person you are rejecting any sort of truth, or explanation... unless if you really really respect them or have some sort of relationship established with them already. Your reasons for rejecting the person are personal and I don't think anyone shouldnt be worried in being "caught" by a rejection excuse or lie they gave...If you aren't interested then you aren't and it's your business how you choose to handle it.
I have never rejected anyone. I have been rejected...and it is so painful. There is never an easy way to hear you've been rejected. It takes a while to recover.
I always told my daughter that just because someone breaks up with you doesn't mean your a bad person; it simply means that your not the right person for each other.. There is someone out there for nearly everyone. Most likely, lots of someones..
Just so you know, I've been married more than 30 years and am happy in my marriage.
I think I'd rather be rejected. I know that if someone is rejecting me, no one is the bad person...we just didn't work out. But if I was to reject someone, I wouldn't know if they understand that as well.
Maybe she wasn't lying. Things just happen sometimes.
You think a couple months was a short amount of time, I had it done to me in a week. Same reason: she wanted to be single for a while when I confessed to her.
For me, I believe in honesty. The only time I had a friend confess to me her feelings and wasn't mutual, I told her that I wasn't interested in her romantically and only saw her as a friend. The result: we're still friends. It doesn't have to be complicated, so don't make it more complicated. Just be honest, and it would sting at that moment, but it would hurt even more when they find out they weren't told the honest truth.
Maybe he had visible nose hairs. Women will reject guys solely for that.
It doesn't really matter if she meant it when she said she didn't want to be in a relationship because she's not attracted to him so he should just get over it.Hopefully the person is mature enough to realize that it's neither person's fault and things didn't work out.
Unless you're willing to work things out with the person, there's no point in telling them what's wrong and you should just break up with them. If you are willing to try to make it work if they're willing to change, then go for it. Otherwise, you're just going to have to cut your losses and move on.
Maybe she wasn't lying. Sometimes someone comes along and changes your viewpoint on people completely. I've sat down and said to myself "right, I'm going to stay single this year/until summer/whatever" and I've told people that (truthfully) and I've then met someone else and all of those ideas have gone out of the window. Generally, rejection just means they don't like you. Do you really need to hear that directly?
people are dumb. just be honest. constructive criticism goes a long way. how else are people supposed to improve?
lol i've actually said this before and i was honest about it.. but you know, things happened and i got my shit together so i had a stable academic/extracurricular life to be able to balance more things beyond that. and i met a guy that made me believe a relationship was worth it, so yeah. peoples' minds as well as circumstances change over time, especially in their college years when they're starting to grow more and more.
Thank you!
Doing the rejecting is rather awkward for me.
I tried explaining this to my boyfriend. I think you should tell the person why you're breaking up with them so that they know, say, for next time, if maybe they were being an ass, if they need to start taking care of themselves and not let themselves go next time, if you're depressed or they're aloof, simply to be honest and give the other person some peace of mind, etc.
My boyfriend and I broke up before and I told him it was because I didn't feel ready yet. That was a lie, but I couldn't stand telling him that I wanted to break up because he was pressuring me into things that I didn't want to do and I found him arrogant and frankly, creepy. He asked me about the creepy thing before and I said no, even though I did. I was too shy to tell him the truth, and this was my first serious relationship. If he had known these things before, maybe he wouldn't have gotten back together with me or he would have taken a better look at himself.Things are great for us now, but if I could go back, I would avoid a lot of pain and regret and just tell him.
We disagree on this however, he thinks that if you break up with someone, they don't need an explanation. He said that if there was a problem, it had probably been mentioned at some point or another, and if you're breaking up with someone over that issue, they should have already known and therefore its their fault and they need no explanation.In our case this wasn't true, because I remember telling him no a lot, him continuing whatever he wanted, and me never bringing this up any other time. He brought it up once or twice, and I brought it up a few times before breaking up, but he told me it was ok that I was saying no, not sorry for pressuring me and we never really discussed anything in detail. I thought I was showing him how badly I felt when it brought me to tears but I never told him. You need to tell people things. If they don't listen, even as great as my relationship has become, i don't care, you will hurt yourself horribly, as well as your partner if they gain some compassion-while not being angry with him, I still haven't gotten over things that happened and it's left me rather confused, and my boyfriend has even openly cried over it plenty of times-> leave.
As much as that sucked I would hate to reject someone. I always feel so guilty and am bothered by the fact that I hurt someone.
"not-untrue"...
you have three main choices:if you thought the person is ugly and you say it, people will consider that tactless and mean. if you try to sugar coat the truth, you try to save your face/esteem which forfeits the other's; their friends can't as easily say 'he/she was a bitch anyway'. and if you try to save face for both people by saying something you think is recognizably false through exaggerated unreason, you attempt to let both people maintain face for a while.
in this post you condemn the most social approach which allows both people to maintain their sense of esteem and move on. you are right it isn't the best approach but that is on an individual basis. i would have taken it like your friend. none the less the choice of the above displays which type of relationship mindset they enter into circumstance with, they exhibit increasing care for detail and invest progressively more significance in the interaction. the type of response tells the listener what type of person the speaker is, and what they are concerned for.
do they care about social perceptions, feeling, truth? they let you know. and it also discloses philosophical bias incompatibility by disclosing/projecting their motivation through what motivation they expect from others.
...
the other problem is convictions. people will hold vainglorious ideas until feelings get involved. she might have been absolutely honest about not wanting to date, then her heart got in the way and she forgot. she unintentionally sought someone who could make her drop that conviction. but she kept them up for him, so he wasn't enough, why wasn't he enough might be a mystery, unless he has the courage to seek an answer which he may not be able to do something about.
seriously. who cares if they lie. it amounts to the same thing. what pettiness. what does it prove to tell someone "i don't like you"? lol
reject. be rejected. ho hum, that's life. be glad you get to participate.
I think it's helpful for personal growth for both parties to be honest...but it's equally important to remember that there is a difference between brutal honesty and constructive honesty.
@renihedgeway@xanga - for some of us it's a respect thing. i know people don't get that these days don't strain yourself trying to understand.
@wildchildofthebluemoon@xanga - I know quite a few women who think this way, and I find it to be rather untenable. Unless you have sufficient reason to believe that your SO is mentally incapable of handling rejection well, it's rather condescending to assume they can't handle it. They're adults, too, not infants.
Not to mention, such thought processes often lead to things like emotional manipulation or trying to get the guys to do the dirty work of dumping because the girl is too spineless to do it herself. Furthermore it means the responsibility for the dissolution of the relationship falls on the guy, leaving the girl seemingly blameless in the public eye.
"When he confessed his feelings to this girl, she told him that she was not interested in dating him because she did not want to date while she was still in undergrad."
Minor correction.
When he confessed his feelings to this girl, she told him that she was not interested in dating him because she did not want to date HIM while she was still in undergrad.
Maybe she didn't want to, but just couldn't pass this guy up? or maybe she was lying.
Either way rejection sucls, but that's life.
There's no better way i guess, I've lost a gd friend cos of this, he confessed his feeling and i didn't know what to say cos we're friends, to avoid any awkwardness, i changed subject, cos I'd never saw him in that way and neither could i reciprocate how he felt, he began to creep me out waiting for me, and followed me everywhere to the point i felt weirded out and people were thinking he's my bf, yeah after telling him directly how i felt, i lost a friend in the process, felt bad hurting him thou..
I´d rather have someone just be honest with me and say they aren´t interested. I hate it when they think I´m too fragile to handle the truth. It makes me wonder what they think I´ll do if I find out the truth: attack someone? Try to kill myself? Wondering what sort of unhinged person they think I am is way worse than them just not wanting to date me.
A guy I really liked started dating someone I knew. It was painful enough finding out they were dating, but finding out he´d actually told her not to tell me was even worse. Again, what sort of person did they think I was?
she could've been telling the truth when she rejected your friend. sometimes things just happen and you can't help who you like. it just is what it is.
i think being rejected and being the person that does the rejecting is somewhat equal. I think it also depends on the person and how they handle things. rejection is a part of life - not just when it comes to relationships. all i know is that when i was rejected, i was glad that he was honest with me and it let me know that not all relationships will work out and that it meant that there was something better out there for me.
but i do know that when i rejected someone, i felt awful for hurting someone else but sometimes the feelings just aren't there and life is too short to force things, especially feelings and relationships.