Perhaps the worst time of my life happened when my first love broke up with me. There wasn’t a day the next couple of years that I didn’t think about her at least once. Each time, it was like an arrow through my heart, and not one of cupid’s, either.
Gradually, as time passed, it hurt less, and maybe a couple of years after that, I stopped thinking about it, and even when I did think about it, it no longer had that power.
I’m not sure how many other times I was turned down. I don’t know how many women have refused various invitations. Mostly I didn’t even bother to ask after a while. I’d wait until I knew someone fairly well, already, and we’d been doing a lot of (non-date) stuff together.
I suppose the lemonade side of it is that I learned a lot about what people want in a relationship. I learned a lot about a lot of things through rejection—how to find a job, how to sell ideas, how to fix a relationship, how to beat even my own rejection of myself.
I certainly did lose confidence in myself. It was quite depressing. Hard to do things—get out of the house, etc. It made me feel like I really didn’t have any friends at all. So yeah, if you love someone, and they dump you, it hurts like the proverbial hell. I don’t recommend it. I also find it a little disturbing and difficult to believe that someone has never felt rejection. Yikes!