Games are for Children - Rejection

Some background

nospam@example.com (Steve) — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 20:26:00 -0800

A friend, who had read the article I posted earlier on this blog entitled Love as a Mental Illness and did not comment on the blog, regarded the viewpoint I took in the article as extreme. In fact, nobody who did post comments agreed with any part of what I had to say. Even Karen, normally soft-spoken, said that some "slip" was showing (if that's even a real term).

Thus, I decided to return to shed some more light as to how I could have come to write such a post. First, I should state that part of the reasons for posting what I did was to draw some ire from the community here, and Eek certainly was irate. However, if you're looking for me to recant what I said and change my mind, you'll be disappointed.

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Break-up lines

nospam@example.com (Karen) — Tue, 21 Jun 2005 08:30:00 -0700

There are break-up lines and then there are break-up lines. Being incorrigibly nosy, I always wonder what reasons were behind any severing of relations. "What did he say? What did she say? What does s/he think happened?"

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Rejection: Him vs. Her

nospam@example.com (Heather) — Thu, 28 Apr 2005 09:04:00 -0700

So, I have been thinking a lot lately about how rejection is different in chics than it is with guys. I owe this thought process to Karen as she first mentioned it in this entry. Previous to her comment I had never really thought about the intricacies of rejection. Do you [men] think that your rejection matches ours? Do you feel rejected if not approached or do you just assume that it is because we don’t feel comfortable doing the approaching in the first place?

The fact is that we [women] do feel rejected when we aren’t asked out. If we go out to a club or a social function and don’t get asked out or asked to dance or have a drink bought for us, then we go home wondering why. If we have a conversation with someone we find to be attractive and he doesn’t ask for our number when it’s time to split, we feel rejected. We also wonder why it is that we are only attracting those older guys or unattractive guys. [Guys] Does being approached by a female that you are not trying to attract (someone you consider to be unattractive or unappealing) dent your self esteem the way it dents ours? We wonder why the cute dude sitting at the table next to ours never came over and said hello.

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Being rejected vs. not being asked: which is worse?

nospam@example.com (LD) — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 17:12:45 -0700

I'm going to be the devil's advocate here and argue that unlike what Steve stated earlier, the idea of women being more successful in relationships is not entirely true. In fact, now I have some anecdotal evidence to support the fact that women go through similar, if not worse ordeals when it comes to relationships. I think this stems from the fact that in our society most often we men are the ones in control, if only it's because we make the first move.

First I would like to point out that I will be talking about "average" women. Certainly there is a small group which is more successful (just like there is one for men). But I believe the majority of women go through similar emotions as we do, except for different reasons. So let’s take a journey into the lives of 2 female friends of mine. Both of them are 21, both are single, and both are "average" in terms of looks but have a good personality.

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Days of the week

nospam@example.com (Steve) — Sat, 26 Mar 2005 09:23:12 -0800

When I returned to Philly recently on a week-long trip, I remember again listening to a radio station to which I had listened frequently before I moved away. The station is one of the standard contemporary top 100 stations. In the mornings, like most radio stations, they put on a talk show. This particular station's morning show frequently discussed aspects of dating and relationships, as their prime audience was probably the 18-35 age group advertisers love.

A lot of the stuff they talked about was ridiculous, intending to create controversy that would attract more people to listen to the show. For example, I remember that they would play tricks on people by calling them and pretending they were spokesmen for an Internet flower company. The script would progress to asking the unsuspecting caller for an address to which to send the flowers. If the target didn't send the flowers to his or her significant other, then all hell broke loose.

One day, the topic particularly outraged me.
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What does age have to do with it?

nospam@example.com (Steve) — Wed, 23 Mar 2005 04:00:00 -0800

One of the issues I've wanted to bring up for a while, but never seemed to get around to, is that of age and how it affects relationships. Recently, I've been hearing from some people that the games I'm seeing women play decrease with age. For example, Kate never mentions that men treat her poorly on her blog, and she's several years older than I. Sure, she complains about some of the guys who move too fast, but they don't do things like not show up or play "hard to get." I wouldn't call moving too fast a game, but a mistake.

Most of the people with whom I get along really well are several years older. Of course, I have some friends who are the same age, but after a while they always tend to drift away. I started paying attention to whom they drifted, and generally they were younger. Or, perhaps, the difference has to do with whether or not one attends college. Again, I get along better with those who are out of college or in graduate school as opposed to those still in undergraduate studies.

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What defines a rejection?

nospam@example.com (Steve) — Fri, 18 Mar 2005 09:01:32 -0800

Two people sent me E-Mails or left comments on other blogs suggesting that I was being too liberal when I state that I am constantly rejected. In other words, they didn't feel as if I had gone far enough to classify the women's responses as rejections. While I agree that I didn't directly ask someone out in the traditional sense in all of these cases, what occurred was a rejection all the same, and in most cases was worse than if I had asked someone out and she had said no.

My definition of a rejection in this sense is when someone in whom you're interested refuses to either acknowledge the possibility of interest, or acknowledges that interest but doesn't go along with it. I don't know of anyone who would disagree with the second part of this definition. The first part, however, isn't always obvious to everyone. The key word in the first part of this definition is possibility.

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Rude treatment - whose fault?

nospam@example.com (Steve) — Tue, 22 Feb 2005 06:10:00 -0800

Recently, I was talking with someone about this site. He asked about the eleven rejections and I briefly described some of the details. He suggested that I was doing something wrong, which I obviously am. But then he suggested that perhaps my lack of skill in the "game" is what was causing all this rude treatment.

His point wasn't that people rejected me because I was unattractive in some way; that's already a given. On the contrary, he felt that the very reason these women were so arrogant was that I was so unattractive to them. Thus, they for some reason threw civility out the door because I wasn't even worthy of being treated nicely. In essence, if I had been more attractive to them (in whatever way), but not enough so that they would say yes, I would get a more polite "no," rather than a rude rejection or no response at all.
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The Rejection Ratio, Part II

nospam@example.com (Steve) — Sat, 19 Feb 2005 08:39:00 -0800

I finally found what I was looking for when I posted about "The Rejection Ratio," at least partially. Take a look at this site. The author gives clear-cut mathematical formulas on how to judge people who constantly reject you. I don't agree with everything he says, but one important point is that he doesn't differentiate in most cases between a so-called "good excuse" and a bad one. All but the most severe (i.e. "I was very ill") excuses are just that - excuses.

Now, that still doesn't say how many rejections are normal, but it's at least a start. If anyone finds a site where a study or a discussion shows how often people are "normally" rejected, please let me know.

Rejection Ratio

nospam@example.com (Steve) — Wed, 16 Feb 2005 09:05:56 -0800

I posted on the about.com forums back in December a threat referring to one's Rejection Ratio. The key idea was that if one takes the number of rejections and divides them by the number of acceptances, a ratio can be formed that tells about the success one has in the area of relationships.

Unfortunately, since the thread I started was hijacked by trolls and others who diverted the topic of conversation to some unrelated problem, very few people answered the original question. I then decided to do some Internet research to attempt to determine what an average "ratio" is for most people, but all the scientific studies I found were more concerned with other issues, such as the ratio of teens having sex versus those who were not.

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A story from way back when...

nospam@example.com (Steve) — Tue, 15 Feb 2005 08:05:18 -0800

I've been saying for the past few weeks that I would finally get around to elaborating on one of the particularly distressing experiences I had in 2003 that contributed to my decision to write this blog.

It was July of that year, I think I recall, and it was the last summer before I moved away from Philly. I was working a job where I and about 24 others would explain to incoming college freshmen how college was different than high school, help them schedule courses, and get them involved in extracirricular activities. There was one person in whom I had been interested for well over a year, but had decided not to pursue because of the politics of being involved in student government (which I later resigned after becoming fed up).

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Availability

nospam@example.com (Steve) — Sat, 12 Feb 2005 09:57:59 -0800

I had been planning to make a post on this subject for at least a week, but other things kept getting in the way, and LD actually beat me to it with a comment about Brian's post yesterday. Apparently, it's not only me that gets the impression that a lot of women aren't interested in dating.

Last night, I went to a dance where there were about 150 people in attendance. The ratio between women and men pretty much evened out by the time the lessons were over and the real dancing began. After I stood around and chatted for a while, I decided to get up and dance, so I noticed two women standing away from the dance floor looking around and chatted with each other as if they really wanted to dance but were just chatting and were too shy to approach someone else.

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For fun or for a relationship?

nospam@example.com (Steve) — Sun, 30 Jan 2005 14:18:28 -0800

While I usually take Sundays off, Ld posted an interesting comment a few days ago that brought up an issue that I had been wanting to mention, namely the difference between dating "for fun" and dating "for a relationship."

You always hear people saying things like "I'm not ready for a relationship right now," or "I want to play the field first." I'd like to offer the opinion that such statements are categorically false and mean something else entirely. Let's take the title of this post, for example. Aren't relationships supposed to be fun too? If you're not having fun being with someone, then why are you involved in the first place? Furthermore, if you really like somebody, shouldn't being with him/her be more "fun" than hanging around with random people?

There's sites out there that advocate setting "bounds" on relationships before they begin.
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"I was checking to see if the fireplace went out!"

nospam@example.com (Steve) — Wed, 26 Jan 2005 14:55:27 -0800

For some reason today, I remembered a hilarious experience I had in the middle of November last semester. I was eating dinner at the Mio Zio on College Avenue. I believe it was a Monday, and I was headed to an extracirricular activity after I finished eating. I ordered my usual, spaghetti with meat sauce, grabbed my salad, and had a seat.

When my spaghetti was ready, as I was standing up I noticed a woman (note how I don't refer to her as a "girl," which should be reserved for those under eighteen) sitting at a table near the window also eating pasta. She and I made eye contact for a brief moment, but as I make eye contact with at least twenty or so women every day, I didn't think that was out of the ordinary.
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Rudeness and Arrogance

nospam@example.com (Steve) — Mon, 03 Jan 2005 11:53:02 -0800

On December 21, I sent an E-Mail to a woman on whom I had developed a crush during the course of the last semester. I had seen and chatted with her on numerous occassions, and she seemed a little shy, but nice underneath. While I wouldn't say she was overtly flirting, she didn't give any negative signals either. I asked her an innocuous question over an E-Mail and her reply sounded happy, so I decided to ask. What was the worst that could happen - she would say no?

Apparently, as I found out, there is worse. When she didn't reply immediately, I assumed that she was probably away for the holidays and wasn't checking her E-Mail. She would reply soon, I thought. By January 1, it was evident she wasn't going to reply as she had made several posts on online forums while pretending to be "away."
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