Not every NO qualifies as Rejection

I was having a chat with a friend and I asked her rhetorically, why people get angry when they ask you out and you say that you are already committed to someone else. That person who was once a friend would suddenly start beefing you without cause. She told me it is because of the rejection, that it is not easy to deal with reaction.

I disagreed with her. I told her that a person that beefs you for not being available romantically is a potential relationship disaster. You don’t turn a friend to an enemy because he/she isn’t available for you to date. It betrays your selfishness and the tendency to be a domineering partner.

Not every No, qualifies as rejection. There is a psychology of rejection. If you woo a single person without emotional commitments, and he/she says no in such a way to suggest to you that you are not up to their spec, that is rejection. 

If I ask a woman out and she says that she is married or in a relationship, it is not rejection. She is unavailable. If she says that she isn’t ready for a relationship at the moment, because she is working on personal goals and doesn’t need relationship distractions, that also is not rejection. Rejection is when she is available and refuses you; when she says no to you and goes on to date another. You want a job in a company and they tell you that they are not recruiting, that is not rejection. If you apply with others, with the requisite qualification and you are denied the job, while your mates are given, that is rejection. 
Rejection deals with availability.

You can’t be rejected over something that isn’t available in the first instance. If we were to base rejection on every No that we receive, we could as well be pestering married people with marriage proposals and start screaming rejection when they decline.

A friend at one time, told me a story of a married woman who was being pestered by a married male colleague. The dude was trying to blackmail her emotionally and acting like his life depended on getting an orgasm from her. He claimed love as his motivation, but I find it hard to believe. What sort of insane love would drive you to neglect your own wife, and be pestering another man’s wife without considering the pain that you would unleash on both your partner and the partner of the lady you are harassing?

When I was asked for a counsel, I told her to tell the lady not to listen to the man. I told her, that he was driven by selfishness and not love. Love takes the happiness of other people into consideration. The man was acting like a rejected soul but I told her not to pay attention to it. The issue here was that the woman in question was already feeling guilty, feeling like she was causing somebody emotional pain. I reminded her that the man had no legitimate right to even ask for what he was demanding. This freed the woman from her hyper emotional sensitivity and concern and made her see that she was being blackmailed. That was the end of that story. The man is still alive and he has not died.