On Rejection

Is it Personal?

There are many different relationships that we become a part of throughout our lives. Some of these connections are chosen while others are not. All of these relationships leave an imprint, big and small, on our emotional psyche. Despite the important role these connections have in our lives, or perhaps because relationships are so important to us, many of us have a hard time figuring out how to make these connections healthy and fulfilling. It is usually through many years, mistakes, and some level of self-awareness that eventually helps us figure out who to trust and keep close. Even if we do manage to learn this in adulthood, it is still a struggle to not feel deeply hurt when relationships end.

Like most emotional triggers, the pain we feel in adulthood when we lose a relationship is partly an echo from the past. There are many situations that cause us to feel personally rejected as children when we struggle in the process of learning to make friends. When other kids choose not to play with us when we are young, they will usually say it is because of some trait they see in us that they do not like or find lacking. We believe what they say to be true because in that moment, they are the ones who hold the emotional power within the dynamic. Even if we have teachers or caregivers who tell us what they said was wrong, what they say will not fully decrease the powerful feeling of shame and embarrassment that we felt in the moment of rejection. It is the power of these emotions that causes us to assume that the peer must be right about us.

Comments made by peers who actually did not know us well enough to criticize in that way, can create an emotional belief that we unknowingly hold onto for much of our lives. Because of the power of this emotional belief, we assume it must be a logical truth that this criticized trait would be rejected by others as well. But the reality is that the peers who criticized this trait in us actually were not in any position to condemn. We forget that they were our peers, our equals and that they, like us, were just children at that time. What they said was not a personal rejection even if it felt that way. They were simply expressing an opinion that deeply hurt because of the immature way, in which it was expressed. We do not have to make that opinion a fact or truth about how other people might think about us. Most importantly, we need to remember that the goal is not to be liked and become friends with everyone. Our goal is to become friends with those who will love and appreciate us for who we are.

At the same time, we can find it difficult to be the one doing the “rejecting” in certain situations. When someone likes us and we find ourselves not feeling the same, it can be difficult to say so because we feel mean. We can also feel guilt in this situation due to mistakenly believing that we “should” respond in kind. We assume that not liking someone in kind means that we are telling them they are not good enough for us. But it can also be true that we do not have to agree to become friends or date someone just because they are interested in us. We can choose for ourselves who we want to get closer to and who we do not. If we do not feel the same, this is not a personal attack where we are saying this person is not good enough for us. It just means that we might know ourselves enough to recognize that we would not be a good fit with this other person for various reasons.

But if we believe that all rejection is personal, the fear of being mean and not wanting to be present when this person gets hurt makes us want to avoid the conversation. Usually for many, this results in “ghosting” the other person. “Ghosting” is an immature way of ending a relationship and can be more cruel for the person on the receiving end because it often causes the other person to blame themselves for not being “good enough”. If we can understand that being “ghosted” says more about the person who is doing the “ghosting”, and see this as information about the other person rather than as a personal attack, we can learn to feel less hurt by these types of rejections over time. The information we learn about the other person when this happens, like conflict-avoidance or poor communication, teaches us to prioritize these traits when we consider who to trust and get close to in future relationships.

In this way, there is quite a lot of emotional energy and work that goes into building a strong relationship. This might be part of the reason why we want these connections to last forever. An additional reason why it is difficult to accept when we realize we no longer feel the same within a relationship that once used to feel great, is the lack of messages in our society that reflects this reality. We are fed stories of “happily ever after” from childhood, and believe that this is the norm when the opposite tends to be more true. “Happily ever after” in our relationships can happen, but not without the continuous effort and energy of both parties to understand each other. A relationship cannot stay strong if one person stops trying. By the same token, a relationship cannot maintain its strength if the people within it change in ways that cause them to fall out of alignment with each other.

The point that gets missed when we focus too much on the “happily ever after” part is that it is normal to outgrow some of our relationships as we get older. The connection between two people changes if the people within them change. Since it is natural for us to change emotionally with new experiences, wouldn’t it be a logical conclusion to believe that our relationships will too? If we are lucky, those we love will grow and mature with us over time. Or those we love might learn to accept the changes they see in us even if they might not necessarily grow in the same way. This however, is not a given. What usually tends to happen instead is that one person in the relationship changes to become more self-aware while the other person does not. This change tends to feel threatening for the other person which motivates them to do what they can, to make the changed person maintain the old status quo.

The person who does this can be a partner, good friend, or family member. Whoever they are, it is very difficult for the changed person to not feel guilt when this happens because there is a kernel of truth in their argument: it is the person who changed that shifted the dynamic of the relationship. But that does not mean that the changed person is to blame. The other person could have also been open to growth and adapted to the relationship as it changed over time. When they cannot or refuse to try, we personalize this refusal and assume this is because they did not care enough about us or the relationship to do so. What is a more likely explanation is that they may not have the capacity to change due to the state of their emotional fragility and lack of self-awareness. Change is scary and we cannot make someone change before they are ready, no matter how much we might wish it to be possible. What we can do instead, is to decide whether we want to stay in the relationship where we are only partly seen, or choose to leave even though it will be deeply painful, to find those who will fully see us.

When we do leave someone we love for these reasons, it is not because we stopped loving them, but rather because we learned to love ourselves more. It might feel like there is no other way to make sense of this situation, than to say that it is a rejection of the person we are leaving, and it can still be a difference in personality or values that led to this decision. Leaving like this does not have to mean that one person is not good enough or less than the other person. What we believe to be personal can usually be seen differently if we learn to be more nuanced in the way we understand people and relationships. By making rejection less emotionally loaded, I hope that we can learn to have less fear of the possibility of rejection, and be able to make decisions that better reflect what we need and want, when we decide to become emotionally intimate with someone new.