Ugliness in Rejection
I was once given a warning about a guy I’d just met and it stemmed from something he’d said to a girl he was dating. Apparently he’d told her, “Face it. You’re fat and no other guy will ever be attracted to you”. From the language I think it’s already clear that this was at the tail end of a failing relationship, but what might not be clear is that they had dated for more than a year. I just heard another rumor recently about someone I consider a friend. He said some similar things, including calling the girl who was leaving him, “ugly”, which in this case was impossible to imagine.
Granted, no one is hitting or stabbing anyone here, but I myself am pretty much incapable of saying these kinds of things to people, and I have to admit that it’s a bit surprising to hear, even in the context of a relationship that’s souring. But it made me think about what it is that I do in those situations instead of lashing out openly. I’ve certainly been the one being left behind, and there is an overwhelming feeling of powerlessness in the rejection I feel when it’s clear that someone I love is separating from me.
Telling someone they are ugly, fat, or stupid is a quick and dirty way to put someone lower on your hierarchy when you’re scrambling to keep their opinion from mattering. On the flip side, at times in the past I’ve made myself completely unappealing by wildly struggling to anticipate, and be, everything that my significant other must have wanted, turning me into a driveling, pathetic mush. More commonly, though, I think my unconscious strategy has been to transform the process into a cerebral challenge and a story I’m writing.
The challenge is to solve the puzzle by gathering all of the pieces of data and using them to construct an understanding of why the breakup is starting to occur. This understanding does in fact have a lot of value in helping work out problems, but it’s also a really great way to emotionally detach from the details as each is categorized for analysis and placed in a box.
As things move ever more quickly towards their inevitable conclusion, I craft the events into a poetic story and start adding it to the collection of stories that make up my life. By doing this even as it occurs, it gives the event purpose, meaning and value. The breakup and suffering become, in fact, a process of creation, the very thing that makes the blood flow through my artist veins.
In the aftermath, this stage becomes crucial and I am very disappointed if I haven’t harvested my intense emotions for poetic profit. Fortunately, this does no harm to my long term relationship with my former girlfriends. Better yet, by avoiding pawning their iPods, burning down their apartment buildings or, worst of all, calling them ugly I’ve so far been able to emerge with some interesting scars, a nice little musical repertoire, and some incredible lifelong friends.
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The same thing applies (or should apply) in all relationships, including business. Simply put, don’t burn your bridges.
Cary
*laughs* I think you’d make a great ex.
you *are* a great ex.