The Pathology of Rejection...

Rejection is something that human beings must face in our lives, to one degree or another, from the moment we are born, until the moment we cease to breathe and our consciousness goes... elsewhere.

Everyone has heard the phrase "I don't deal well with rejection..." The truth is, NO ONE DOES!

The reason for this is because rejection is an assignment of minimal value. If you didn't get the job, it's not because there was someone else who was better-suited for the position (although you may tell yourself that as a sop to your self-esteem), it's because you weren't good enough. When you ask someone out on a date and get turned down, it is because they think they can do better than you. Whether or not they even admit it to themselves, this is still true. You didn't measure up to a minimum standard they had set for themselves, and you were rejected.

It's natural human behavior, and it is the reason why communism fails with human beings. Communism depends on everything having an equal and relative value, and no human being considers themself equal. They have standards that they set for themselves, and they do not accept anything they consider substandard. Sometimes, our self-imposed "standards" are ridiculous, to the extreme. An example of this would be the grossly-overweight man who's wearing a t-shirt that proclaims "NO FAT CHICKS!"

Such a contradiction in terms is actually NORMAL, however. People rarely have an accurate self-image, and our culture is to blame for this. All women are aware of the standards of beauty that are assigned in our culture; we are constantly blitzed in the media with the images and ideas of a common denominator that qualifies as "attractive", whereas anything that doesn't fit in that paradigm is automatically "unattractive".

This has held true for recorded history, and yet it is not a constant. The definitions of what is acceptable or even desirable are arbitrary, and have vacillated wildly, over the centuries. One need only examine the art of our race, to see how the definitions of "beautiful" have changed, throughout the ages. One can look at paintings from the dark ages, and see women that were semi-obese, yet they were naked and placed in positions of honor and focus. In our time, they would be at least PRETENDING to diet, trying to fit into that narrow strata that our culture defines as attractive. 400 years ago, the girl who dismisses herself as "thick" or "chunky" would have been a beauty-queen contestant!

The Elizabethan Era in the United Kingdom pronounced that breasts were ugly, and women all over the civilized world tried to de-emphasize their decolletage by binding and flattening their chests, with whatever means necessary. Such women would have been HORRIFIED to see our modern women who have surgeries to artificially enlarge their bust, and wear clothing designed to emphasize breasts... make small ones look bigger, and make bigger ones extraordinary! By artificial means, women have been trying to conform to the "standard" for centuries, from one extreme to the other. All this, to avoid rejection.

A century after the puritanical Elizabethans, breast-size no longer signified, and waist-size was paramount, in combination with derriere. A woman would put on a corset to make her midriff appear as diminutive as possible, and a bustle to make it appear as if her rear-end were capable of supporting furniture.

In but a single generation have we seen remarkable changes in what is considered attractive. For the last twenty-years, or so, women have presented themselves as promiscuous and sexually uninhibited (a "freak", to use the current parlance) in order to be higher in the social rankings of her peers. Yet, until the late 1950's, no man would have considered a "slutty" woman as desirable for marriage, at best she'd have been a one-night stand that you would never confess to your friends, much less take home to meet Mom and Pop.

Do you think I am mistaken, perhaps? Ask yourself how popular Annette Funicello would have been, with a stud in her tongue, a tramp-stamp tattoo on her back, and 90% of her body clearly visible in public. Look how times have changed. Britney Spears, at first, followed the Social Strictures for younger girls by appearing chaste and demure, yet by the time she'd reached sixteen years of Age, she was easier compared to Marilyn Monroe or Madonna. Such behavior is forced on women by our society's dictates, and had Britney not bowed to them, she'd have disappeared quickly like other wholesome young women who did not bow to the demands of fashion and culture.

For thirty years, children have been leaving for school with less and less clothing on their bodies, until it is no longer noticed. Those who do object are dismissed as puritanical and bigoted, and those who champion it are lauded for being free-thinkers. Still, it only a sign of the times, and any student of History can tell you: THE TIMES CHANGE.

The ideal of Masculine Attractiveness doesn't seem to have altered near as much as that of our opposite gender. Essentially, men are still judged by our height, musculature, and general aggressive nature. Someone who is considered by his fellow males to be a "bad man to get in a fight with" is consequently viewed by females as more attractive than his fellows.

Yet, even to those who fit perfectly within the standards set by the current culture, rejection comes. This is because many of us have preferences that are canalized by our environment. I once knew a young lady who was extremely attractive, with an older sister whom she idolized. This older sister dated black men as a means of "getting even" with an ex-husband, but her choices had a profound effect on her younger sister. Now, to the younger sister, only black men are attractive, there is not a man of her own race and culture that has a chance with her, because her preferences were set by her perceptions of her idolized sibling.

Each of us grows up, knowing the standard, yet we alter it to our own perceptions, as well. The young lady I referred to would reject any black man who did not fit into her picture of what was "beautiful" for that particular race. She wanted the perceived standard of perfection: tall, muscular, "dangerous", with the added condition that he must be black. A short and obese black man didn't have a chance with her, he wasn't good enough for her.

As strange as this sounds, it is still truth. To some women, George Clooney is the ideal, yet to others, he is unacceptable.

Men have been getting around this, with artificial means, much as the women have. Rather than do radical and often dangerous things to ourselves physically, as women do, men try to affect the balance with such exterior devices as money, fame and power. These things have attractiveness to many women that can override other considerations, if only temporarily. We have all seen very wealthy older men who were surrounded by young, attractive women. We all know that such men would not be in that circumstance, were they low-income and not famous or powerful. They, however, found an artificial way to inflate their attractiveness to the opposite gender, and therefor the likelihood of rejection for them dropped, drastically.

Interestingly enough, the converse does not seem to be true. A young and attractive male is not as often willing to pair himself off with a much older woman who is not "beautiful" by our culture's standards. As always, there are exceptions to this, but they are made by deliberate choice, and the participants harbor few illusions. The older woman knows the younger man is not in love with her, and knows if the money dries up, the guy is gone. The same holds true for the older man, though you will find few who will admit it, either the male or the younger female that is attached to him. If asked, Hugh Hefner's companions would deny that they were with him for any reason but his personal magnetism, however, would they admit that his personal magnetism would have been ignored by them if he were just their next-door neighbor, and not the wealthy and famous world figure that he is?

Therefor, we do see that people can use artificial means such as money and power to lower their risk of rejection. The beautiful young woman who would normally say to you "You're not good enough for me, you're not up to my standards, get lost!" will not say those things to you, under the right circumstances.

So why is rejection so difficult for us all to deal with? Mainly, because that which we are rejected for was acceptable to us, so therefor, in our eyes, we were good enough for it.

You don't apply for a job that you don't consider yourself capable of doing, do you? Would you walk into the hospital and try to secure employment as a surgeon without any previous training? Of course not! Yet, when you've spent years gaining the training and experience to , say, manage a business, and you apply as a manager and are rejected, you perceive that as saying that your training and experience aren't good enough to get you the job.

The same thing occurs with our romantic endeavours, although our expectations can be wildly unrealistic, in this arena. The obese slob with the "NO FAT CHICKS!" shirt literally believes he deserves better, as crazy as that may sound. A prime example of this would be the movie "Shallow Hal", starring Jack Black. The world is full of people who do not fit within the strictures of what our society terms as "beautiful" or "desirable", yet their mental self-image will not let them accept anything less than what would be "premium" by our culture's standards. Needless to say, they face a lot of rejection, and yet they characterize the rejectors as being "shallow" for not wanting them, at face value.

The hardest rejection for a human being to endure is that of LOVE.

As I pointed out earlier, each of us applies a relative value to everything around us. When we assign the word LOVE to the value that a person holds in our life, that also assigns an importance to that person. Once you have decided that you love something or someone, that person or object takes up the Central Focus of your existence. Nothing is more important to you, than they are. So often, however, that love is based upon a false mental picture of the person or object that we fell in love with. You will often hear women say "He's not the man I fell in love with"... Yes, he is, you were just in love with a person that didn't exist. You built up a false mental picture of this person's attributes, and that picture took the place of who the real person was in your life. They became not just ACCEPTABLE to you, they became PARAMOUNT. You would give up everything else in your life to have them, because their value to you had reached the point where it was greater than your own self-value. Later on, after you stop ignoring the fact that so many things you "loved" about them don't really exist in them, as a person, then they begin to lose value to you, until the point is reached where they're no longer good enough for you, and you want to leave them.

That is what divorce is, ladies and gentleman. One (or both) person(s) in the relationship had reached the point where the other no longer was significant to them. They had decided they could have done (and should have done) better, and they want to be free in order to do better.

So many times, our love of another person is not based upon how we feel about them, as a person, but how they make us feel about ourselves, as a person. The woman who can make a man feel like he's the luckiest guy on earth, that he's won the heart of the most priceless and beautiful of people, will own him. Her appearance won't matter to him, even personality traits that he despises in others will be a superlative in her, in his eyes. Men go off to war for such women, die for them, all through history, and it is strange that often the man never really knew the woman, as a person. All he knew is that she was the key to his happiness, and there was no extreme he wouldn't go to, to make certain that she was happy with him, as well.

So, when we fall in love with a person, we assign to them the highest value and importance that we can. We would die for them, and even their slightest wish to us is a command. This is how the human race works. Even the most base and selfish of people will give up everything for the one they have assigned the value of "LOVE" to. The relationships that last for life are the ones where both people keep that value for the other person. Obviously, this is only possible by understanding who the other is, as a person. Eventually you will recognize them for who they truly are, you will see their faults and their shortcomings, and possibly even virtues you did not recognize, before. If you cannot still assign to them supreme value (i.e., LOVE), in spite of that, your relationship will fail. You will reach a point where they are not good enough for you, and you will despise the person that only a short time before, you would have given your life for.

For this reason, divorces are so acrimonious. The person being divorced recognizes that they are no longer considered good enough for the other party, and that is rejection. No one likes rejection, and all of us consider ourselves to be above-average, in our own eyes. Do you think Adoph Hitler looked in the mirror and said "I'm a monster, a worthless piece of crap that doesn't deserve to walk this planet with other human beings"? No one sees themselves as evil or ugly or valueless, yet when we are rejected, we know intuitively that the person whom is rejecting us sees us in that manner, or they wouldn't be rejecting us.

The old adage "I just think of you as a friend" doesn't fly with the other person, what they hear is "You are not good enough to be my lover". You might as well have just come out and said "You're fat, or ugly, or old, or poor, and I'm too good to waste my time on someone such as you".

As I said, this is why Divorces stress our relationships so badly, because this person who actually has (at one time) decided we were good enough for them, now believes otherwise. There came a point where they looked at us and said to themselves "I can do better than you", when they used to say "You are the best I could possibly get, I am so lucky..."

Human psychology is a twisted and confusing mess, because it depends upon so many strange inner bargains and arbitrary assignments of value, or we would not be able to function as a society. We lie to ourselves and to each other about what is really going on inside us, partially because we don't really understand it, and partially because it isn't very pretty to look at. Since we can't admit to ourselves that we've changed the rules of the game, we have to assign the blame on the other person. "You're not the man I fell in love with..."

So... as you go through your life now, and you consider the relationships around you, I hope you'll take these things into mind. When someone loves you, you're the center of their universe, and that's how our species was designed, so that we could continue on. It doesn't matter whether the picture of you they're in love with is really you, or a false one that they've built up. What matters is that once you've lowered your value, in their minds, you've lost them. The only way to keep the ones you love is to understand and love them for who they are, and make certain that they understand you and love you for who YOU are. If you maintain a false and inflated value to them, eventually you will lose it. This is the reason why the relationships built on artificial externals, such as money, fame or power, always fail. Because, when it comes down to it, eventually they see who you really are, as a person, and it is up to you whether that is a person they will love... or reject.