Why does rejection still hurt?

gluckkk · 2021-09-14T13:09:33+00:00

Simply put, it hurts because we are human. It sucks when someone doesn’t like you or want to be with you, whatever their reasons for that may be. It’s personal. Ultimately, though, I think it really hurts deepest that in the process of being rejected by a LVM we realize how utterly impossible it is to find a suitable partner. We wonder why we can’t just do away with our standards and values in order to be accepted by someone. We might be tempted to do just that and to reduce ourselves to a mirror version of the LVM.

It gets lonely at the top. It’s worse at the bottom. Don’t internalize any rejection, ever, even from a job interview, etc. It has no effect or impact on your next chances.

Inspection-Critical · 2021-09-14T16:53:19+00:00

Do you take it personally when a toddler can't meet you at your level?

No, right?

Why not? Because they're not at your level. They're not capable. It has nothing to do with you. It's simply where they're at.

Low performers don't value anything valuable, doesn't matter who or what it is. The worst low performers can't even hold down a job or meaningful friendships. More functional ones might look nice on paper, but everybody in their family despises them or they're secretly a criminal doing horrible things behind closed doors.

Bottom line: These aren't people who "get" it. They don't have integrity, and they have profound flaws that impact their life in serious ways. Many of these people are flat out flaming train wrecks, even if they refuse to admit it.

What can you expect this person to understand of value? How would they recognize a pearl if they found one? This person lives in a pig sty (literally or figuratively), so how would they even know what pearls look like?

That's like expecting an average person to recognize haute couture. It's outside their wheelhouse and not a reasonable expectation. There's a reason it takes years of expertise and certifications to be qualified to value art at Sotheby's. If you don't have eyes to see, you won't recognize what's right in front of you, and even if you did, you wouldn't care.

It doesn't mean the Rembrandt isn't valuable. It means the viewer isn't qualified to recognize what they're seeing or why it's a big deal.

You're expecting shitty losers to recognize your worth - men who are intimidated by successful women because they have nothing to offer, men who hate boundaries because they can't steamroll you for nothing in return, men who raw dog it in bed because they have no respect for their own bodies let alone yours.

They don't get it. They're not qualified to get it. They don't have the eyes to see it. They don't have what you have within themselves, so they can't recognize it in you, let alone understand why it's valuable.

It's natural to feel hurt at rejection because you're human, but I'd be asking why you're attracted to underfunctioning losers who aren't capable of appreciating you when you represent everything they're not capable of doing for themselves.

I just can’t figure out why it still hurts when I know in a year or two I’ll be further along in my career and he will be at the exact same place in his life.

What do you think his failures reflect about yourself?

Why do you think you have the ability to change someone else?

If you were able to drag a loser up to your level, what would that mean for you?

pickmieshaexorcist · 2021-09-14T13:34:51+00:00

Yeah please don’t feel alone or like you shouldn’t still feel bad. We are human. It can seem like everyone else is super badass with hearts made of steel but that’s not true.

It matters way more what we DO with feelings. By all means, feel bad for a bit, but don’t let the feelings make you act in ways that will be detrimental to you.

Reframing things also helps: any guy who rejects you and is a known LVM is a loser, regardless of any fuzzy feelings you have about him. No man is “out of your league”. That kind of thinking is the fast-track to pickme-ville. Nix any pining. Even if you feel like you’re lying to yourself, fake it til you make it. Say it in a mirror: that guy was a loser. He wasn’t out of my league; I was out of his. He is not the one. Onto better things.

vforvendetta87 · 2021-09-14T13:39:55+00:00

I feel you. Childhood trauma intensifies those fears as well.

Rejection hurts everyone. We were created to live with each other. I believe it’s a biological need to feel we belong. We can’t explain why but we know it’s important. Don’t quote me here but I think the reason rejection hurts us the most is because when we’re rejected we’re cast out of a group or society, which means we have to fend for ourselves, and the chance of survival when we’re all alone is slim. So, biological! :) I was listening to a Ted Talk yesterday and the speaker made a profound statement that stuck with me; she said “You are more likely to die from loneliness than <<insert tragic medical diseases>>.” And it’s true.

Of course, since we’re modern beings with a plethora of information on psychology, we can also understand at the same time that just because 1 person rejects you doesn’t mean the rest of the 7+ billion people on earth will.

You’ll find your tribe. Hugs. ❤️

mcSnappleteet · 2021-09-14T13:10:45+00:00

I sometimes wonder, with my therapy sessions and all the work I've done to level myself up, why do I get so bothered when I'm rejected? Thank you for voicing this! Not feeling so alone on this now

sexualfoodpantry · 2021-09-14T17:18:50+00:00

It's true, most men don't fall in love with a woman's brain, but there's plenty of smart women in high value relationships.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was one, Marie Curie certainly was. Even the current counselor of Germany, often publicly ridiculed for not being conventionally attractive, is still married to the man she met, while doing her phD.

It pays to have some standards. Even if you never meet the man who lives up to them, you'll at least be spared the ultimate indignity that can occur, when we settle for less that we deserve.

pickmieshaexorcist · 2021-09-14T16:20:02+00:00

[permanently deleted]

fg_hj · 2021-09-14T13:10:32+00:00

Rejection is a hit to your ego regardless of who the rejector is. If anything it could be a symptom of lack of self assurance since you need the validation of other people.

About how to really find HV people, I ask myself this question too.

Risas1239 · 2021-09-14T16:31:42+00:00

I don’t think this is a matter of rejection, but of self-esteem. There’s no quick fix for that. Self-esteem/ego is hurt the worst when you are rejected by someone you think is beneath you, because your assumption is that your value lessens. You believe that if you were hotter, you would be undeniable. That’s just not the case. Models marry rich nerds all the time and still get cheated on. You should not derive your worth from the desire of men. That’s like trusting pigs to keep your pearls clean. It takes a lot of therapy to unpack where low self-esteem comes from in your childhood.

Clinton very clearly derives her worth from her husband and her electoral performance. This is why she is so closed-off. She wasn’t elected because she didn’t listen to minorities, not because she got publicly cheated on decades before. When your value is external or fixed, you tend not to have a growth mindset. Your identity and personality and physical body are all fluid and ever-changing, but if you see it as fixed, any slight or loss or external opinions will easily lower it. Check put: “Growth Mindset,” “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck,” and any trauma book out there.

vaporwav3r · 2021-09-14T16:46:53+00:00

I HARD relate to this. I just started talking to this guy very recently that I definitely like.. we really hit it off. Sooo much in common, he’s funny, I’m attracted to him and we have similar life goals… but he keeps making these rude sexual comments that are starting to rub me the wrong way, even though I said I don’t want to talk about sex and that I take things slow.

You just feel so defeated.. like there are no respectful men in the world. They always gotta have some major flaw. It’s so disappointing cause you talk to like 10, 15, 20 different guys through meeting in person, online chatting and texting and they’re all awful.. then you meet one you like and he fkn is a big disappointment.

“I hope he would fall in love with my brain.” Story of our lives.

sruslywhytho · 2021-09-14T15:45:31+00:00

In my experience, the more comfortable I’ve gotten with setting unshakable healthy boundaries the less it hurts.

It has taken a lot of time, trial, and error but I’m extremely comfortable with myself in this stage of my life. Things are far from perfect, but I fully accept myself warts and all and I fully honor my needs to the point of knowing that bending them for temporary approval from someone else isn’t worth the long term disappointment or disruption I’d create for myself.

When someone is outside of those boundaries it’s easy to walk away with no second guesses. And same for when I’m rejected. When I meet someone who walks away from me it’s because they have certain needs I’m not interested in meeting. We’re both better off closing the connection.

Like it took me a few months after breakup, and many FDS posts, to realize that my ex (who I thought was HV) was actually LV. I had been really sad about the end of our relationship. But when a lot of shit hit the fan in my life this year and I considered what it would of been like to have still been with him through hardships I realized how happy I was to be alone. Having to deal with the uncertainty he brought into my life would of only made things worse.

Feeling hurt by rejection is absolutely human, but I’d question if it’s the rejection that hurts or the difficulty in finding ppl who met your boundaries?

ceramicunicorn · 2021-09-15T03:20:46+00:00

Mods, I hope we can talk about this subject more on the sub. Maybe give it its own flair. Not to wallow in loneliness, but to acknowledge a very real feeling I think a lot of us with- well some would say “high”, but I would say- reasonable and healthy standards in terms of how we are treated by romantic partners, friends, and family, have. It’s a feeling that I think colors how we approach dating, it’s our biggest Achilles heel in our decision making and it’s foundational in pick-me behavior...this longing to belong. We intellectually know what’s acceptable in terms of treatment, but it’s exhausting being on the outside all the time (even if the inside is more often a pigsty than not), when we keep running into the same shit with the new dates and friends we encounter....and that’s when we tend to fuck up and let things slide.

I really liked what u/Inspection-Critical said above, about remembering that you can’t expect those on your level to see your value. It’s this kind of thing that I think is really helpful to hear on a regular basis, and I thank her for that emotional labor, because you can have all the do’s and don’ts in the world...but if you don’t have that mindset shift to pull you out of the loneliness trap, it makes those strategies really hard to execute. My therapist is great, but does not really connect with these realities the way FDSers do, and while the making-fun-of-men posts might make my frustrations feel validated and the strategy posts are good notes, it’s posts like this that acknowledge the root of why we let boundaries slip- and give tips on managing the pain of being alone at the top specifically in the FDS context- that are so helpful. As are posts that dive more into rebelling against patriarchal norms (enforced by both men and women) re: female roles; because if that framework didn’t exist (with, thus, an exclusionary space that many of us exist in, outside of said framework), I think the loneliness- the root of bad decision making (which LVM count on for maximum access to female bodies)- would be mitigated quite a bit. Just my own two cents.

Platipus6 · 2021-09-14T23:06:48+00:00

Because we're constantly told to lower our standards and that a man who's worse than us will be grateful and worship us. So we date a man beneath us and like wow even he doesn't want us. Rude.

Now I realise they're rejecting the idea of the effort they know they'd have to put in to keep us. It's ok. Some people are losers and only have 10% to give. I'm going to hold out for a man who is willing and capable of giving me 100%.

lansburysoda · 2021-09-14T18:34:07+00:00

Stop going for men you perceive as below your league/barely at your league and start going for the men you really want. The part of you that’s hurt is the part of you that knows you “settled” but in the end you were manipulated and screwed over.

mitzislippers · 2021-09-14T23:24:57+00:00

Yesss had been vetting two guys but my “favorite “ (the one I had so much attraction to and more in common with) started making sexual comments at me not just that his texts started slowing down once he saw my boundaries were firm he started acting cold and just like that poof. it hurts. the other guy is nice tho and is persistent but the attraction is not all the way instant??? 😶 all the dudes I had instant attraction with were only after sex and would ghost me then pop up with gfs a few months later, like gosh it’s a weird chop at your self esteem like wth…

Title	Why does rejection still hurt?
Author	Impossible_Mud_7599
Upvotes	241
Comments	35
Date	September 14, 2021 12:47 PM UTC (4 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/FemaleDatingStrategy
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/FemaleDatingStrategy/comments/po232x/why_does_rejection_still_hurt/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/FemaleDatingStrategy/why-does-rejection-still-hurt.1070487 https://theredarchive.com/post/1070487

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