Dear [BJ],
Would you mind forwarding this message to [BT]? I missed her at the last couple alumni events and was wondering how she’s doing. I’d enjoy corresponding with her, and if she’d like to do the same, she can reply back to me directly. My email address is:
Thanks much, and take care.
I talked with [BJ] this morning. She did in fact, forward the above letter to [BT], and she did confirm with [BT] that she received it. But that’s been some months ago now. So it’s likely a fair assumption that [BT] isn’t going to write.
Apparently, [BT] understood my motives, because [BJ] did say, without my asking that [BT] still has a boyfriend; although they’re not living together anymore. [BT] said that she may write back. But [BJ] felt that she’d only do so if she thought that all I wanted was friendship. [BJ] warmed that [BT] would definitely not respond, if she sensed that I wanted to develop anything more than a strictly non-romantic association.
At any rate, [BT] now has my email address, and since I now know that she knows that I’m interested in communicating, I need wonder no more why she keeps silent. I’ve often pondered that question through the years: Is it that she just doesn’t know I’m interested? Maybe she’s of the old school and doesn’t initiate communications, believing that it’s up to the guy to do it. Or, might it just be that though she knows I’m interested, she has no similar interest in me?
However, I need not know the precise reason why she’s been so quiet, because all that really matters is that [BT] has chosen not to communicate, though I’ve made doing so as easy for her as I can. I’ve given her the means to reach me, and ample encouragement to do that if she so desires. So, regardless of the reason she hasn’t done it so far, it must be good enough for me to know that she just doesn’t want to. In fact, I have now pursued this effort to its logical conclusion, because there’s nothing more that I should (or can) do, without [BT] rightly perceiving me as a disrespectful pest.
But, should she change her mind, I’ll probably be here. She knows I like her, and she’s assertive enough that I believe that she will get in touch with me should she ever develop similar feelings. So, I must now leave it up to her to take the next step, and I’m comfortable knowing that she’ll probably never take it. Unless new information comes in that strongly indicates that she has changed her mind, I’d be a fool to make any further overtures, and my conscience (through the voice of anxiety and fear) would not permit me to take any further action.
Well, at least I was spared the humiliation of receiving a reject letter from [BT]. In fact, I’ve had no communication with her at all since this last, indirect yet potently disheartening exchange.
She doesn’t like me. Period. I accept that fully, and find today that I don’t blame or shame myself for her dismissal of me. Even if she had sent me a letter of rejection, intellectually speaking, I don’t think reading it would be as painful as I fear. Indeed, it’s usually been the case that fearful things aren’t as fearful when faced as we fear they will be, before facing them. I’ve made too big a deal about rejections like this, and a central focus in my life now that I’m 50 years old, is to compensate for this, and stop over-reacting to these love rejections. I’ll remain sensitive to them, and will not repeatedly pester someone who rejects me, as [BT] has here. But I will no longer fear incurring them, nor will I berate myself when I do get them.
Receiving lots of rejection letters by no means makes me a reject! She might see me as the reject but that does not make it so. It probably just means that she does not want what I’m offering; nothing more universally valid than that.