Rejection

Just after Christmas I went out for coffee with a friend of a friend. It was a set-up, the first time any of my friends have ever tried to pair me up with someone. So how did it go? I'm not sure. I find it hard to objectively evaluate anything in my personal life and consequently I often find myself at a loss when trying to figure out what someone is thinking or feeling. But that generally only applies when I'm interested in someone romantically, I'm usually pretty intuitive with my friends.

We met, weren't immediately repulsed by one another, and talked for a while over a cup of coffee. It was just general chit-chat kind of stuff: jobs, music, movies, travel, and all that. During one of the few brief breaks in conversation I made an observation about awkward silences and how they make me nervous. She responded by saying that she didn't think silence was awkward at all and didn't know why people regarded it as such. That's a fair point, really, because it's not the silence itself that makes people uncomfortable, it's what they think that silence represents. I think I often instinctively read negatively into silence: she's bored, she thinks I'm weird, she thinks I'm unattractive, she's trying to remember why she broke up with her last boyfriend because if more dates with me are all she's got to look forward to then she's definitely going to call him later tonight to see if he has plans for the weekend... clearly, all rational things to be thinking. So that's why I think she's being silent, but generally the reason I'm not saying anything is that I am interested in someone and don't want to say something stupid. When I'm talking to someone I'm not attracted to I am not so focussed on making a good impression and I'm reasonably adept at keeping the conversation flowing. But as I say, there were only a couple of very brief pauses in the conversation so I couldn't really read too much into it.

The body language, on the other hand, wasn't particularly positive. She seemed to be leaning away from me and turning her body to the side so that she was facing forty-five degrees to my right and looking at me sort of over her shoulder. From what little I know of body language that doesn't really seem like good news. This, however, is all really inconsequential because what really matters is that I haven't heard from her since. A few days after we met I sent her a message to see what she was doing over the weekend and whether she'd like to see a movie. She said that she was working and that maybe we could catch up some other time. I took this as a polite rejection but a few days later decided that there was no harm in trying again, just in case she actually did have to work the whole weekend and did actually want to catch up with me. So I sent her another message to which I received no reply. That made things a little clearer. I relayed this to the friend who introduced us and she urged me to try again so a couple of days ago I called her but she didn't answer and I left a message. I still haven't got a response. This makes it pretty clear that she's not interested.

No big deal. She's not interested. Truth be told, I'm not even sure I was interested in her. I know that sounds just like someone being told that they're fired and responding by saying, "you can't fire me - I quit," but it's true. Sure, she's nice, and pretty, too, but I'm not convinced we're compatible. I just thought that since it was the first date I'd been on in a couple of years and we seemed to get on well enough that if we saw each other again we might become friends. It seems I may have indeed been right about what those few brief silences were saying.

What bothers me about the whole situation is that she never said that she didn't want to see me again. She just flat out ignored me, twice. How much effort would it have taken to say, "I don't think we're compatible," in a text message? That's why I sent her a message instead of calling her; I figured that if she wasn't interested I didn't want to make her uncomfortable over the phone and that it would have been much easier for her to just reply to a text message with "no thanks". I'd like to think that I would be upfront with someone and not just ignore them in the hope that they go away.

If I seem more annoyed about this than someone should be if they are genuinely not interested in someone, it's because this has happened to me before. It was about six years ago and it really bothered me then because I liked the girl a lot and she gave me the impression that the feeling was mutual. And then she completely ignored me. But that's a story for another time.

I spend a great deal of time trying to understand women, probably about the same amount of time I spend trying to figure myself out. I don't know who I understand the least. At least this latest rejection hasn't made me depressed the way being rejected usually does. It won't stop me from trying again. What might stop me is that I find it incredibly hard to meet people. I think I'll make that the subject of tomorrow's post.

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On a completely different subject, my interest has definitely been piqued by a comment which was posted anonymously after a previous entry. I'm told that the author will reveal their identity if I request that they do so. Consider this a polite request.