A woman canceled a date with me recently. Part of her text message read,* “I’m sure you’ll find someone much, much better than me.”
*
I’m sure this question is impossible to answer in a one size fits all way, but which explanation is more likely:
(1) She genuinely believes she’s not much good;
or
(2) She’s just trying to smooth things over in a ‘It not you, it’s me’ way (when it really is me)?
or
(3) Other reason?
Knowing her personality, and considering that a significant reason for her canceling the date was my indecisiveness (which, I admit, is a glaring character flaw of mine), I suspect a combination of 1# and 2#, but anyone have other insight/feedback?
Based on what we have so far, I’d say it’s mostly #3, which is that she determined it wasn’t worthwhile trying to be in a relationship with someone who had commitment problems, be they in significant or minor ways, and that she’s using #2 as a way of trying to spare your feelings and make it seem like she’s the one with the problem.
She sounds really afraid of confrontation and is too scared to tell you what she doesn’t like about you. You are obviously interested in her and she is applying a fictional standard you have to her…so most likely she is just passive aggressive.
What is the most gracious response to this form of rejection?
The little white lie “oh I forgot I had promised to meet my girlfriends,” flake-off must be pretended to be believed or else you look petty.
The direct “sorry, I just don’t feel like it after all” receives a “thank you for your honesty” (sincerely: thanks for not wasting our time but no thanks for not giving it even a fleeting chance).
But how do you respond to someone who’s resorted to the gambit of insulting herself, without joining into the insult? The best I could ever manage is “maybe this isn’t a good time for you.”
I should think the factually correct answer would be something like “I’m quite confident you neither know or care whether I do or not, as long as I go away and don’t bother you any more,” but I don’t see any scenario in which it’s actually helpful to say so. Just file it under “dude, she’s just not into you” and figure that she at least tried to tell you a polite lie.
I hesitate to say this on this particular message board, but, sometimes ignorance is the better option. I’n not confident knowing the truth in this situation is going to make you feel any better.
3a) She has so little respect for you that she thinks you’ll believe obvious falsehoods.
3b) She cares so little about your feelings that she’s willing to make the most destructive comments possible for only negligable benifit to herself.
3c) She hates you so much that she can’t go without adding the passive/agressive put down.
Implicit in the statement is the idea: that you can’t tell the difference between someone of value and someone without value, and there is a hidden catch: if you accept her judgement, then you are loosing someone whose judgement you respect: if you don’t accept her judgement, than you’re accepting that you’ll never find anyone better.
And what is your judgement about that catch? Well, fortunately, she’s just indicated that your judgment is suspect, which is going to make it hard to decide.
It like a bitter nasty version of the old summer camp story: are you safe? Because the monster only come to get people who don’t believe in the monster…
She obviously means that sometime in her past, some cad led her down the primrose path and then, his brute lust sated, cast her aside like a soiled, broken toy: passion’s plaything. And now, bereft of her womanly virtue, she believes that no temperate, Christian man would ever give her his name nor grant her the blessings of sacred motherhood.
Here’s your chance to be the hero of a Kirk Cameron movie!
ETA: or, like sven says, just move on. Those are basically your choices at this point.
Probably option #2. My advice is to take every rejection, no matter how it’s worded, as a gift – now you know you can direct your efforts at meeting others. No hard feelings, but getting the NO’s out of the way early just makes it faster to find the YES (for relationship and compatibility).
If you’re dating online, then it can work like this: send out a bunch of introductory messages to profiles that you’re interested in, and rejoice at each NO you get, no matter how it’s worded – that just narrows down the possibilities. It’s the uncertainty that can drive you nuts, not the rejection, in my opinion. Someone will say yes; just keep trying.
I think by “better” she means “more compatible”. She can see that a relationship wouldn’t work out for various reasons and there’s no sense in going down that path. I’m sure you know plenty of women who are perfectly nice but you have no interest in being in a relationship with them. If she’s not feeling at least some romantic interest initially, it’s not likely to happen later on. It’s better to nip this in the bud than worry about dealing with hurt feelings later on.
You didn’t mention your age. I think past 40 a lot of us tend to find something wrong with nearly everyone we date that we consider a deal breaker for a relationship. I met several women with views similar to my own. Why put all this effort into building a relationship when it is going to fail anyway? Hard to get past this way of thinking.
Essentially this. A few times, I’ve had some really good discussions about why things didn’t or wouldn’t work out, but those are very rare, and there’s usually another factor that led to that. Typically, even if one person or the other is trying to give some sort of honest feedback, it’s not going to be all that useful because it’s from their perspective from a first date and perhaps a few emails and a phone call before that. As a general rule, just take rejection as incompatibility, and take it as a blessing.
Because really, what sort of explanation is really all that helpful anyway? If you agreed with it, you wouldn’t need the explanation, you might well have initiated it yourself. If you disagree, it could just be them. Hell, I’ve been rejected and told contradictory reasons. One woman says I’m too serious, one says I’m not serious enough. Which one is right? Maybe both are right and it’s not that anything is necessarily wrong with me, we just weren’t right for each other.
Instead, use it as an opportunity for introspection. What did you like about her that made you want to see her again? What parts were you less enthusiastic about? Use those to help choose a future person. What did you do that you think worked well? What did you do that you think didn’t? Use that as a way to figure out how you can better present yourself. Ultimately, you should be aiming to be the best you, not something you aren’t. If you’re not a funny person, memorizing a bunch of jokes is going to get you were results. If you’re not intellectual, trying to talk about determinism vs freewill isn’t going to help. If you’re not artistic, taking her to a local theater performance is going to give the wrong impression. I think you get the idea.
Once you know what your strengths and passions are and how to best represent them and what to look for for the people that you find attractive and find your strengths attractive, then all rejection means is that, obviously, you’re just not compatible and that’s fine, it’s quite common that two generally good, honest, people just operate fundamentally different enough, or have different enough cultural reference points, or substantially different belief structures (religious, political, ethical, whatever), or are in just such different places in their lives at the time, that a relationship just isn’t going to work, or is going to be more effort to make work. And sometimes those differences may be more apparent to one than the other or the threshold may be different such that the level of effort isn’t worth it to them. After all, why put so much effort into someone that is not all that different from a stranger if one believes that someone who is fundamentally more compatible can be found more easily?