In the past two years, I've been practicing accepting rejection and I've gotten plenty of it. Some people give me reasons, some don't. They all have one thing in common; they have declined to meet up with me. Rejection is a funny thing. We take it so personally, and yet it has so little to do with us as people, especially when dealing with online dating.
I extend the invite to meet, in the hopes that my profile and the brief patter of chatting will engage the other person enough to show up so we can dive deep into the conversations of the things that catch and hold our attention. What things are we passionate about? Do we have overlap? What are differences and what can we learn from those differences?
The most recent rejection was particularly disheartening. Her profile was engaging and her smile enchanting and I really wanted to have a 3 hour coffee session with her, talking about ALL THE THINGS. Her rejection was kind and soft and she included an explanation. In it, she explained that she didn't think our styles of poly are compatible.
In that moment I felt like I was not enough, unlovable, broken, ugly, less than, and whole host of ugly, yucky things. I wanted to do ANYTHING to make it stop. Because her rejection prompted all this, if she would change her mind, then I would be all better and none of those things would be true.
All of those thoughts happened in a moment, a split second. All of the things I told myself were lies. They were lies I TOLD TO MYSELF.
When we are rejected, all the ugly we bring up is from our own hearts and minds.
What is the best response when we are rejected? How do we weather that internal storm?
Hit reply and say, "Thank you."
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