| Is Rejection Just the Price you Pay for Being a Man? |
|
By Flex (Flex is a single 54 year old university English professor who’s passions include music, literature, and the quest for the best Chinese restaurant to offer what he calls the Holy Trinity of Chinese specialties, all fried. He plays the guitar and sings.)
Question: If a man asks a woman out and she puts him off, is this rejection? For example, she says she thinks she has a previous commitment and has to check her agenda. What’s a cool way to handle it?
Flex: He feels he’s put in the position of having to get past her possible rejection and suggest another night, so he’s feeling some kind of unfairness. He’s having to negotiate through this block. An example is a woman in my neighborhood I was talking with because I ran into her frequently. I had met her at the Laundromat, saw her again, and we talked about places to go for pizza. "Oh, we should go have pizza," she said. When I saw her in front of her house, we’d talk, but she never invited me inside. Finally, she gave me her phone number, I called, but she didn’t return my phone calls until days later. I was getting more and more frustrated because I couldn’t see why this woman who’d seemed enthusiastic, didn’t respond. And she didn’t have a cell. She was sending mixed signals. She was amenable to getting together but her actions indicated otherwise, that she was not interested. She was just being polite. When I told her I wanted to treat for dinner, she told me the first time we went out she wanted to go Dutch. So that was the first sign of a mixed signal. In my case, we actually made dinner plans and then she called back and cancelled them. I sensed her getting uncomfortable on the phone; I felt she thought I was being too pushy. and so when she said “I can’t get together with you,” I didn’t want to try again. I felt we were at an impasse, so I gave up. It’s a situation where a woman should follow up with another time suggestion if she’s sincere about why she can’t make plans at that moment so the man doesn’t feel he’s having to negotiate with her.
Question: Did she carry it too far? Should she have rejected you sooner and clearly? Flex: When she finally said “No, no I can’t get together” it didn’t bother me. What bothered me was the back and forth, the mechanics of making the plans, attempting to make plans with her. That bothered me more than saying she didn’t want to get together. Question: Does rejection does get easier? Or do you recognize it more quickly? Flex: As you get more mature you have a framework ready so that you recognize rejection whereas when you’re younger—well. In the example from my recent past, if I’d been thirty, the younger version of me and she’d rejected me, I’d have given her a hard time and have argued with her. |
