Victorious Rejections
Dear [Mentat],
Yes, I did, and still do believe that the more we approach, the greater our chances of finding a true love are. However, when I adopted this overly simple strategy in 1990, I wasn’t expecting that I’d encounter such a high percentage of rejections. I mean, many dating books advise men to expect just one out of every one-hundred women to respond favorably. But with me, that hits-to-misses ratio was more like one out of every fifteen hundred. No joke.
Plus, I’d underestimated the cumulative negative impacts of too frequent rejection on my psyche, and came to understand that I was taking them too personally. Back then, rejection affected me as would a punch in the face, sending me reeling for weeks sometimes. I came to detest it and the women who would issue it. The more rejection I received, the angrier I got.
So I had to bow out of the game for a year or so in the mid 90s to learn to desensitize myself. To that end, I entered therapy, read several books on coping with rejection, and tried to savor life without women for a while. The therapy proved a success, though of course, I still don’t like rejection. But today, the female utterance of the word No, doesn’t produce the searing anxiety it used to. I don’t feel as slighted anymore, because I understand that ladies are as powerless to control who turns them on as I, and so could not be rightly blamed for finding me wanting.
While I came to take rejection less to heart and to stay calm when it happens, I also learned to stop underestimating its potential for triggering numerous other harmful effects. Even to the most self-assured person, romantic rejection has clear costs. It can:
- Counteract confidence,
- Promote neurosis, depression, and psychosis,
- Interfere with ability to concentrate,
- Sap motivation – even in unrelated areas of life such as work,
- Aggravate food, drug, and alcohol addictions,
- Create a false sense of futility regarding the achievability of one’s Big Dream,
- Encourage withdrawal from social circles – isolation,
- Lower immune system function,
- Increase at-rest stress levels, and
- Promote obsessive behaviors such as trying more than once to date a girl who’s already rejected us.
In short, too much rejection without sufficient time between each occurrence for healing jeopardizes one’s physical as well as mental well-being. So, while encountering rejection while pursuing a dream cannot be avoided, we should not subject ourselves to it needlessly since it is potentially harmful.
Some schools of thought equate rejection with progress, in the sense that the more ladies who turn us down, the closer we are to finding one who will at last accept us. “Let’s say you have a pool of 10,000 women,” my therapist said. “Your goal is to quickly rule out as many of those as you can so that you’ll reach the ones who like you faster.” The underlying assumption is that at least someone in that pool of 10,000 will in fact find us attractive. In this light, rejection appears as a holly grail, to be sought out rather than avoided. But as mentioned, it also stifles motivation to keep trying, which may in the end prove more debilitating than avoiding it in the first place.
As a means to the desired end of acceptance, we can easily abuse rejection by seeking it indiscriminately, just as we might overindulge in exercise on the way to a healthy, fit body. Work the body too hard without enough rest in between each workout, and you’ll wear out your joints, promote arthritis, and reduce the long-term benefits of training. That is, should you become arthritic, you’d not be able to continue to work out as vigorously, and some of the routines you simply would not be able to do, period. Clearly, the future effects of overdoing it in the present would limit the benefits you could gain in later years. And over the course of a lifetime, exercise improperly managed as a youth can actually cause reduced average fitness, just as the chronic dieter can wind up heavier than those who never dieted at all. Likewise, subject yourself to too many rapid-fire rejections without allowing sufficient time for reflection and mental repair, and you’ll probably experience some of the symptoms I’ve listed above. Too much rejection can exacerbate the very condition (loneliness) that you’re trying to eliminate. So at times, it’s wise to avoid it rather than repeatedly confronting it.
Plus, when meeting a number quota became the sole object, I found I was approaching too many of the wrong women. I suspected that they were wrong. But I approached them anyway, thinking that they’d eventually warm up. I tried ignoring body language. No matter if she turned away as I walked closer. I’d strike up a conversation anyhow. Why not? I’d seen so many men do this with eventual success that it seemed a prudent behavior, even though invariably it was received badly on the first attempt. One man described a woman’s protective shell that he said, must be penetrated. It really is a war, these pesky men say, because ladies intentionally play hard to get in order to test the man’s resolve. (Obviously, these men have little faith in her sincerity). Give up when she appears uninterested they caution, and you lose the battle because she’ll deem you of faint heart, and as such, undeserving of her trust. Take no as her final answer, and you’ll never enjoy a lovely beauty in your bed. Nonsense!
Yet for a time, I believed them and attempted to mimic the proverbial pit-bull that just doesn’t let go. Sometimes I talked to their backs, hoping that [the women would] eventually face me with intrigue. But that never happened. In fact, I felt all the more foolish, when they’d get up and leave, for having failed to pay head to their non verbally communicated wishes. [Ignoring their initial body language] made rejection a more shameful experience than it needed to be, and that made me come to fear it all the more.
Perhaps this technique works for some men, but not for me. What’s the point of approaching at all, if all you’re after is rejection? I came to expect rejection so much that a woman agreeing to dance with me left me stunned, as I was unprepared for a Yes response.
It’s bad to seek rejection just for rejection’s sake because one needs to have an eye toward any wisdom the experience might contain; wisdom that’s easy to miss if all you’re worried out is bumping the numbers. At times, I lost sight of the real goal (a beautiful lady saying yes), and actually felt a sense of accomplishment when I got a no. I reasoned that the rejections were evidence that at least I was getting out and trying, rather than sitting on my butt at home doing nothing. This was certainly true enough. After all, I wouldn’t have accrued the rejections by sitting around at home. In a sense, the rejections were indeed strong evidence that I was at least playing the game. No, I wasn’t winning the game. But since one must play the game in order to win, I found comfort in knowing that I was one step closer to winning by playing, and accruing the rejections.
This worked for a year or two. My pride in my monumental efforts to defy my fear helped offset the humiliations I encountered. It didn’t matter whether she said no or yes. Success at that point I measured by how often I could bring myself to ask, irrespective of how she responded. But soon, that sweet part of the bitter-sweet taste of rejection disappeared. No longer was it good enough just to get out there. No longer was I proud of being able to work up the courage to ask a woman to dance. And finally, no longer did I feel any sense of accomplishment by having gotten far enough to be told No. Getting rejections thus became child’s play. And then, once the thrill of victory over successfully making the attempt faded, only the humiliation remained. Thus, sustaining the motivation [to keep trying] grew difficult, particularly once I moved here to Altoona in late 2001. Even today, it’s not [so much] the fear of being rejected that keeps me from approaching more women. Rather, it’s the resignation that they’ll just say no anyway, so why bother?
Rejection is all the more embarrassing when one realizes that he could have gotten the same information without risking so much. Why jump head first into a pond to see how warm it is, when you could have just stuck your toe in and learned the same? Throughout the 1990s, I dismissed the validity of non verbal communication. For me, the toe test was insufficient and potentially inaccurate. It wasn’t good enough thus, for a woman to just give me a dirty look as I walked toward her. Simply looking at her and observing her reaction did not absolve my responsibility to genuinely move past my fear. Just reading body language didn’t count. No. I expected myself to actually ask her if she’d care to get acquainted. Of course, by this time in the typical scenario, she had already answered that several times with dirty looks, by moving away, and such, and was clearly frustrated that I paid no mind. So, not only did I get rejected, I also got many judgmental stares along with disparaging comments and unfavorable epithets. In this way, the bite of rejection felt much more painful than it might have, had I acted smarter and with more sensitivity.
To wrap this up then, the costs of focusing only on increasing the numbers of women approached, and not enough on improving the approach techniques, would be:
- Pointless risk taking.
- Needlessly frequent and severe rejections. It’s one thing to simply be told no. But it’s quite another (and more painful thing) to be told no with the added message that she thinks you’re a fool, particularly when you have indeed acted as a fool.
- Too many repeat rejections from the same woman. When numbers are the only game, we often forget who we’ve already approached, particularly when approaching hundreds of women in a night like I used to do in Philly back in 2000. Sometimes, I’d ask the same woman three or four times a week for a dance, totally forgetting that she’d already turned me down. As I learned, this can lead to humiliating repeat rejections because women generally don’t forget a man who hits on them – at least not for several weeks anyhow. She’ll remember that she said no before, and wonder why he’s come back to try again so soon. Again, this can heighten the humiliation of a rejection, because she’ll surely regard him a fool hitting repeatedly. Genuine attraction doesn’t change much from week to week or year to year. That is, who we find utterly and completely enthralling today, we’ll also find that way tomorrow, next week, next year, or even next decade (unless of course, the person gets fat in the meantime). Likewise, he who turns a woman off today will do so, probably forever. So it makes no sense to repeatedly “check back” with her, hoping that her feelings have changed. To engage in this absurdity sends the message loud and clear, “Yes, I’m a big fat fool.”
- Reputation. Women talk crassly about insensitive men, who appear to be on the make.
- Missed opportunities to learn from rejection. If you don’t consider what happened and learn from it, you’ll be no more likely to get a Yes the next time. And who wants to keep repeating the same mistake? Take gamblers for example. They’re never content to just sit back and play the game. They’re constantly looking for ways to improve their odds of winning. The man seeking a mate should also be forever on the look-out for new angles.
- Wasted resources such as needless money spending. Often, guys buy ladies drinks and other gifts, even when they strongly suspect that she doesn’t like them. Yet they do so hoping to melt her heart. What a waste however. While such strategies might work on the so-called gold-digging lady, they will not on any woman whose only agenda item is to exchange love with a desirable man.
- Less time for other pursuits. If one’s constantly out in the bars working the numbers, he’ll miss out on other, perhaps more enjoyable pastimes. To me in the 1990s, bars were a necessary evil one had to endure in order to meet women. I didn’t like them, but couldn’t think of any other places where so many available and desirable women congregated, and thus where my chances of finding a lover would be higher. I would have much rather spent that time attending ham radio club meetings, shopping for CDs and books, and tinkering with computers. However, these activities weren’t often frequented by sought-after women. Yet now that I’m aware of the futility of meeting someone in a bar, not to mention the fact that I don’t drink anymore, I find these days that I make very much more time for hobbies than ten years ago.
- Too many dead-end relationships. When all we care about are the numbers, it’s easy to become entangled in a relationship with a lady who isn’t the best. That is to say, that without careful prior consideration of the woman’s desirability, we can end up approaching ladies who look great from afar but cease looking so good as we move closer. I’ve on occasion glanced women across the room that seemed perfect. Then I rushed over (before someone else would snag them) for a dance. Sometimes they’d say yes and next thing I knew, I’d be on the dance floor looking at her before me and wondering where her charm had gone that had been so plain but a few moments ago.
From the preceding list, it’s easy to glean the many practical advantages of working smarter while targeting more than just raising the sheer numbers of approaches:
- Better Overall Mood. Less shame, less depression, less wasted time chasing relationships doomed to failure from the start, more liked in one’s social group, and more time to pursue fun hobbies.
- Less Need for Therapy. This grows from item 1.
- Improved Self Confidence and Self Esteem due to less squandering of the self on needless rejections.
- Improved chances of finding Miss Right. If one is not consumed in the wasteful efforts of needless repeated rejections and dead-end relationships, he can aim his resources where they’ll count more, and only subject himself to rejection from truly eligible women.
- Fewer Wasted Resources. Follows from item 4 above.
- Better Reputation. With a better ability to read the situation, a man is less likely to make unwelcome advances in which he goes needlessly too far. Women like knowing a guy is sensitive to their wishes, and will talk well of he who heeds them to others, even if they don’t consider him attractive.
- More Time and Energy For Other Pursuits. Questing for the right relationship can be exhausting because not only does it take considerable time and effort to troll for girls, but the rejections make the search doubly taxing. If a man is working smarter, and is thus presumably getting fewer rejections, this would seem to bias his overall experience in the quest to the positive and thus make it less draining on his psyche.
- Better Effectiveness in Work and Career. With fewer rejections, and a resulting better overall mood as mentioned in item 1, the man would concentrate better, be less irritable, and thus, do a better job at work. As a result, his coworkers would like and respect him more and likely push for promotions for him where applicable. This in turn would give him more resources (buying power), and as you know, women prefer richer men, even the ones who can’t accurately be typed as gold diggers.
- Longer Lasting, Happier Relationships. If a man selects more eligible mates to begin with, he’ll be happier with his choices for longer periods. While it’s true that he won’t have as many dates since he’s choosier, those that do present themselves will be more completely fulfilling. As a result, he’ll
A. Treat them better,
B. Respect them more,
C. Be less given to abusing them, and
D. Be better able to accommodate any unusual proclivities in them.
In short, he’ll be better equipped to accept them as they are and thus, won’t as likely seek to change them. Potential friction shrinks therefore, and the lady will feel more genuinely loved (because she would in fact be). - Enhanced Desirability. Given items 1, 3, 6, and 8 above, the man would be deemed more attractive, and so his chances of attracting the lady of his dreams would go up.
There, does that answer your question?
