Sunday, March 16, 2008

Learning how to say NO

NO!

It isn't too hard to say. Just two letters and one syllable. But I always wonder why it is that most women have trouble saying it. Okay, this entry is going to be in two parts. Part 1 will be on how to say NO and Part 2 will be the reason that I'm writing this.

Part 1
It is generally the prerogative of the man to make the first move. This opens up the guy to a whole manner of hurt. So at the very least, the lady should learn how to give a straight answer. The trouble with most women is that they don't. Regardless of whether the answer is a yes/no/maybe, it rarely becomes clear at all. Some of my friends here are constantly in limbo. Now, I'd like to give some tips to the ladies.

  1. Be prompt.
    Yes, do not wait for several days before giving him an answer. And trying to ignore the situation while hoping for it to go away, is also not an answer. Any implied answers are open to a whole world of speculation and are not answers either. So, please give an answer as soon as you can sum up enough courage to face the situation.

  2. Be honest to yourself.
    Regardless of how much you think you are hurting a guy by saying no, you are actually hurting him more by giving him a half-ass answer which puts him into limbo. If he has made the honest move and been honest with his feelings, the very least that he deserves, is an honest answer, whatever it may be. We are made of some pretty hard stuff, not brittle glass. It is going to hurt like hell if we get rejected, but we will bounce back. Rarely do guys commit suicide because of love. It's only silly little girls who do.

  3. Be clear as crystal.
    This is particularly true if you are planning to reject his advances. A no needs to be a flat out one. Don't make the no end up as a maybe/I'm not sure/please try again later. It is going to be painful for you to lead him on unnecessarily, only to hurt him after he has invested more into the relationship (whatever form it takes). If you are truly not sure, then tell him that you are truly not sure. Don't say no and then say you're not sure. That is a half-ass no. If it's a yes, just say so!

  4. Be firm.
    Again, very important if you are saying no. Learn to say it with a straight face. If you have to, practise in a mirror. You need to say it with conviction, and not with some lost look on your face. It is just going to confuse the poor guy if you say no, with a sad look on your face. He will think that you are actually confused and that confusion will spill over.
Now that we are clear on how to say no, let's talk about why I'm making this entry.

Part 2
The young lady that I've been pursuing for a while, gave me a no. But she confused matters by giving a half-ass no. So, I became unsure of what her no meant. Therefore, the only course of action that I could take was to continue my pursuit. However, we had a very long and meaningful conversation last night, which has cleared up many things and balanced off many others.

Now, things are fairly clear on what our feelings are (or in her case, lack of) for each other. So, now we can go back to being friends. You may wonder why I'm not being emotional about this, it's simply because things just haven't quite hit me yet. Presently, I'm still in denial mode. I can sense that my heart and head are sending out different messages. But it's going to hurt like mad, when it hits me, that I'm sure of. I was not very careful with my feelings. But that's just the way it is.

I do think that I'll continue to carry a torch for her. How long it's for, is anybody's guess. However, all I can hope for now is for us to continue being friends. It would have helped if she could tell me what it was about me that turned her off me. Then, there would have been something for me to focus on. But she couldn't identify anything and I did not press her for it.

But I guess that I'll just need to live with it. At least we were both honest with each other and we had a clear conversation on many things. We joked about a lot of funny little things and awkward situations. I even gave her a few pointers on how to handle such situations again, in the future, because I'm very sure that she'll have many more suitors.

I'm also glad that we had this conversation now, because I would've invested a lot into this relationship. But even now, I'm still thinking if I should give up or not. I don't really know for sure yet. I am not generally a quitter, especially when I think that the end is worth it. In fact, my brain is still scheming on how to get things to work. However, I also know that these things cannot be forced onto anybody. So, I will need to think about this thing later. This might just be part of the denial process.

Part 3
Okay, there is a third part. It's about myself. I'm just a little low on self esteem now. So, it wouldn't hurt if people told me that I was hemsem, creber, and kyoot or similar. What's hurting my self esteem is my failure rate in these things. It's getting to the state where things are a little worrisome for me. I know that I'm not particularly attractive. So, I do not expect women to just fly into my arms and am prepared to work for it. But it's kind of sad that the women whom I fancy, all end up deciding that they just want to be good friends with me.

Nice guys tend to come last. Sigh.

2 comments:

Ir. Dr. K.C. Ng said...

We all go through a stage when we have to deal rejections in life. This I believe is the building blocks to make us a better person and for greater things to happen in the future. I trust sometimes, if u wait just a little longer u will not regret it for the rest of your life, while at the meantime do what is most important at hand :) KC

Dan said...

what happened to 'i do not need girls'?

growl.