If you ask someone out and they say no, you don’t lose anything. This is why it’s so important to build the kind of life for yourself that you can enjoy and be proud of with or without another person involved. Where things get complicated is when you’ve known the person for a while and suddenly start developing feelings. If you act on it and they don’t feel the same way it potentially jeopardizes any previous friendship that may have been there before. Where you once wanted to be around them as much as you possibly could, you now start to avoid places you’re likely to see them. In its most extreme form, this can lead to complete and total isolation.
So then the question becomes: What will your life look like without this person in it? If it feels incomplete without them, it won’t be complete with them. Every day that goes by that you don’t act on your feelings is time spent imagining the idea of being with them. When you start to build your long-term plans around a person who doesn’t even know that you like them is when you’re most at risk of getting hurt. This in my mind is what most people are actually afraid of rather than the other person simply saying no. Agree or disagree? Leave your thoughts below.
4 comments
Tldr: Your life should be complete before you introduce someone into it.
You should not be relying on having another person in your life to complete your personality they should merely compliment your personality.
Fall out is the worst. Glad I didn’t mess up the most important relationship of my life.
Fallout easily
1. Like you mention it could end up with me losing a potentially great friend
2. You could get a bad rep at a business
Guy here.
I fear the fallout of a bad/harsh rejection hands down. A simple rejection is a breeze compared to losing friends and other blowback. It stopped me from trying with women in my social group that in retrospect were practically begging me to ask them out or to have sex with them.
Ironically I found rejecting worse than being rejected (politely). If girl politely turns me down, I smile and wish her the best and move on. When I’ve I turned a girl down I’d felt bad about it because I just hurt this poor girls feelings, that was not fun at all. I’ve had a few instances where a polite rejection was not well received to say the least…. That was not fun for other reasons.