rejection

Several different conversations I've had lately have left me thinking about rejection. Specifically, that our responses to perceived rejection, real or imaginary, our experiences with rejection, and/or our fears of rejection inform most of our dealings with other people and much of our everyday behavior.

My own lil cross to bear in this department is the marked tendency to reject people first before they can reject me. I've struggled with this for a long time, and while the self-awareness involved in knowing that it's my default setting is, I guess, a step in the right direction, it doesn't mean that I don't slip right back into the behavior pattern if I'm not watching myself carefully. What's even sadder is seeing echoes of it in my kid, whether from inherited temperament or learned behavior or, most likely, that murky stew of both.

One of my closest friends is my exact opposite in this. Wherein, if I think someone may possibly not like me, my reaction is to think "god, what a [insert your favorite insult here]" and to think I wouldn't want a person like that as a friend, so there. Her reaction if she thinks someone doesn't like her is to wonder obsessively what she's done to make them not like her and what she can do to reverse the tide. I'm not sure which of us is actually more fucked in the head, but I'm pretty certain that I don't need a PhD in psychology to decide neither of us handles this particularly well. Heh.

And then we won't even discuss how I've managed to make it into my 40s without ever actually being dumped, because of a.) preemptive dumping or b.) hooking up with people whose dysfunction in this area is to just behave really really badly when they want out, so that they never have to be the bad guy by being the one to leave. Or c.) both.

I dunno. Being a human being is an interesting condition.

xoxo