I got to thinking of those people who have expressed an interest in me over the years and how I felt about them.
Rejection hurts. When you really care for other people we often feel bad about telling someone, “I’m just not interested in that kind of relationship with you right now.” I think it is a really important thing to learn to say though, and just as important, to learn to communicate that message in the gentlest possible manner in which it will be clearly understood. I don’t mean you’ll always need to be super caring and gentle. Some people need a rolled up newspaper to the snout and a loud, “NO!” But not everyone.
I say this because I see people talk about “the supposed nice guy” and the “incel” and I think, there but for the graces of a few special people in my life, could have been me. It was not, as you might suspect, someone letting down gently that did it though.
It was someone expressing interest in me and me letting them down gently.
I had to learn to show compassion because I genuinely liked them (I was going to say most, but I can’t really say there were any I didn’t like…) and not only didn’t want to hurt them but also didn’t want to lose the friendship we had. I suddenly found myself putting someone else in the “friend zone” and it turned my world upside down because I experienced the other side of the equation.
Relationships and attraction and interest are complicated and sometimes fluid things. The friend zone is a real thing and so is the fuck zone and the borders are sometimes fuzzy and sometimes changing.
The point here is to have patience with people as much as you can. Tell them you’re interested in something else if you really are. Learn to accept that they may like you but “not in that way”. Learn to tell people you are not interested in that way. If you both do this and are honest, you didn’t lose anything unless you choose to. We may not be in control of our feelings but we can definitely be in full control of our actions.
And so I’d like to thank those who told me they were interested in me who I had to let down gently. You’re a big part of why I did not end up like so many others. Be kind. Be honest. Be direct. Be bold. Communicate.