A man and a woman went on a date. The woman found it ‘horrific’. The man wanted to see her again. She didn’t respond to his invitations. He wrote her an email. It went viral.
‘It’s bad to play with your hair so much and make so much eye contact if you’re not interested in going out with me again.’
Most of the resultant internet banter has held up that the man in question is a complete creep. He probably is. But is what he’s articulating — extreme disappointment that someone he went on a date with isn’t interested in him, despite what he perceived to be her encouraging ‘signals’ — not something that pretty much everyone who has ever gone on a date and has not had their affection reciprocated has felt? Yes, most of us have the good sense not to write in an email that
‘I find you less appealing now (given that you haven’t returned my messages) than I did at our first date. However, I would be willing to go out with you again.’
But I’d be willing to bet that a lot of us have thought it, once in a while.
So, on that ‘we are all this mad investment banker in the darkest recesses of our hearts’ note, here are three lessons that can be learned from this:
- If someone doesn’t call you back, it is because they’re not in to you. Much as it’s tempting to think that it’s because they broke all of their fingers and can’t dial the phone, or because they are misguided in their thinking that you are not soulmates. They don’t like you! Even thought you are exceptional!
- But if you’re the person who doesn’t want to see someone again, tell them. Just once. Even if they are vile. This won’t necessarily stop them from sending you crazy-ass emails, but it will make it less likely. Make your position clear. Not responding with a polite (or curt) ‘no, thank you’ is not just unkind — it increases the possibility that the unappealing person will persist. If they don’t take the polite/curt no for an answer, then do by all means ignore future correspondence.
- If you are writing an email to someone who has rejected you romantically and you find yourself thinking, ‘gosh, I would not like it if this email was reproduced in a wide range of online media outlets’, the person you are writing it most certainly does not want to read it. So don’t send it.
