Wow. You've gathered inferences and made implications about my personality which I find incredibly disturbing. When you put it that way, yes, I do sound like a stone cold you-know-what. You make it sound like what I'm advocating is the utter destruction of a person, and then the utter stomping on the ashes of the person I just destroyed. That would be heinous indeed.
I actually agree with most of what you said. There is no call for being unnecessarily rude or mean. I think maybe I should have been more careful with my words. My (obviously awfully chosen) words exaggerated my meaning, and your understanding exaggerated my words (and some of what you said that kind of came out of the the blue makes me wonder if somehow I'm reminding you of somebody you intensely disliked?), and now it sounds like I'm
Maleficent or something. Although it would be fairly cool if I could turn into a dragon. And I would love having oboes following me around with a creepy ditty everywhere I go. But I digress.
It's just that I had this experience where I let a guy down nicely, and he kept on harboring those feelings for a long time, and then brought them back out. I had to be "painfully blunt," as I guess I unfortunately put it.
But in a situation like that where somebody really likes you, and you have no feelings for them at all, there's really no way not to hurt that person. You can let them go on liking you, in which case they just spend more time thinking about you when it would really be in their best interests to move on, and the situation just gets increasingly awkward, or you can tell them firmly, "No, really. I'm serious: there's nothing there. Please stop." That is what I mean by "painfully blunt": because either way, the situation is going to be painful for them. There is no way I can see in this situation to spare their feelings, because you don't share them. No matter how much cushioning you give the truth, they're still getting punched in the gut with an iron fist, and there's nothing you can do about that.
I mean seriously saying something like "The less time this person spends liking me the better" or even "The less time I spend liking this person the better" just seems...robotic. Void of emotion or feeling.
Maybe for some people (namely, me), sometimes shutting it all down before it gets too deep hurts less. It's a coping mechanism, and I realize that not everyone is capable of doing that. I mean, it's not like I shut all my emotions off like a switch. But I try to distract myself, tell myself he's not interested, and focus my attention on less painful things, like piano-playing, macrame, drawing, heartbreaking, kitten eating, puppy punching, and stealing candy from babies. Okay, just kidding. Not macrame. Anyway, I don't know if it's a good thing or not to give up so fast, but I don't get hurt as deeply as I used to. I guess that makes me less human.
I kind of wish some guys had told me the truth before I embarrassed myself any further. Some guys never said anything, and just acted awkward or talked to other people about it until I figured it out for myself. Those experiences were the most painful for me. But I acknowledge that not everyone is the same, and for some people, the truth may be more painful than the utter humiliation of realizing you made a fool of yourself and nobody was loving enough to tell you. I don't expect everyone to feel the same way about it as I do, but, as you yourself said,
treat others how you want to be treated
I'd rather have the truth from someone than be allowed to continue in false hope. And if I'm displaying a pattern of behavior that actually drives people away, I would want someone to tell me so that I can stop. It's happened before, and it's painful and embarrassing, but I am grateful to those people who were brutally honest with me, because they have made it so that I can avoid getting stuck in the same painful situations over and over again.
As someone who has also experienced a lot of rejection, I can honestly say that no matter how nicely a guy lets me down (or does nothing whatsoever but clearly doesn't like me), it still hurts a lot. It sounds like it feels pretty much the same to guys and to girls. For girls (or at least, for me) it goes a little something like this:
this guy won't date me = no guy will ever want me, I must be some kind of ugly, what's wrong with me, am I that unappealing, what did I do wrong, how much weight do I need to lose, maybe if I looked like what's-her-face, was it something I said, ugh I'm such an idiot, how could I possibly even think somebody like that would ever fall for somebody like me, etc. You get the picture.
This person I had this situation with was a good friend of mine, and the first time, I told him as nicely as I could, but I also told him firmly. I know I communicated clearly, and I know he's not a psycho. But for some reason (that reason being that he's incredibly loyal and incredibly stubborn, a combination which is both admirable and frustrating) he decided to keep cherishing those feelings, and then broached the subject again at one of the worst possible moments. It was a huge mess, and it made me feel incredibly sad, because he had in the past been one of my closest friends, and I hated that I was causing him pain.
I didn't know what to say for the longest time, so I asked advice from people I trusted, and their advice was not to spare his feelings. By that they meant that I should tell him the truth instead of dancing around it and hoping that his feelings would go away (since clearly, they weren't). Some of them told me to be downright mean, but what does that even entail? I'm not sure, but I think whatever it is, it may be what you think I was advising airichan623 to do. Clearly, I do suck at communicating sometimes, and I shall work to better myself at being more specific in the future. But this was my problem then, and apparently still is a problem: How do you even deal with a situation like this? Anything you do is going to hurt the person. So I had to tell him, "I'm sorry, but no. Please move on." It was one of the worst conversations of my life, and it was what I consider to be "painfully blunt." If that makes me "a witch with a capital b", I'm sorry, but what could I have done? I didn't want his attentions, and I didn't want him to keep on hoping for however longer when I'm fairly certain nothing will ever happen.
But maybe my idea of mean and your idea of mean are different... I think you are right about a lot of what you said. But I also think it's not fair or kind to encourage feelings that you don't share, and really don't think you will share for the foreseeable future. I mean, who knows? God does have plans for people that they don't understand and all that, but if you know God is calling you to (if you'll allow me to use an extremely thinly veiled self-referential example) go be a missionary in Japan, and their desires and passions and calling lie in a different direction, one in which you have almost no interest, how can you encourage them to keep those feelings for you for the next
x amount of years while you go off to another country, when you really have no intention of following through when you return? But perhaps I am making a leap of logic that lack of rejection = encouragement. However, in my experience that seemed to be the case. With my friend, my inaction was likely to lead to further undesirable pursuit.
Okay, sorry, this is getting way off topic. That being said, Nate, I think you're right about a lot of things, and I think I communicated poorly, and that my words communicated a meaning much harsher than I would really use, or have used in the past. But I'm not a monster, and it makes me sad that you seem to have inferred that I am from my words (at least, that's what I inferred from your words). So I'm going to go edit my old posts now because apparently rather than the intended meaning, my words conveyed that I am a massive meanieface.
:hits_self
