“It’s not you, it’s me”. I would be lying if I said I’ve heard this over and again. Growing up and getting in and out of relationships, I was usually the one that threw this phrase around. What seems to be a popular phrase seems to formulate into some sort of complicated cop out. A typical response to “It’s not you, it’s me” is “But, why?”. I mean is must have something to do with “me” or we would still be together. People take the easy avenue by pointing fingers on themselves rather in the direction they should go.
Rejection is just part of life. We all have faced some sort of rejection either at work, at school, maybe with friends and in relationships. Relationship rejection is one of the hardest kind of rejection to overcome. I’m not sure why it’s the hardest, maybe because we feel attacked, our personalities, our mannerisms, our flaws,our ways.
Feelings of rejections might stimulate questions like:
What did I do so wrong?
Am I too fat?
Am I not pretty enough?
Why don’t you love me anymore?
Did I talk too much?
Do you still care about me?
Is there any way I can make this work?
When someone rejects you in a relationship you feel as if you are to be blamed. You feel like you are the cause of the end. Sometimes we never take into account that it actually might be the other person, but we can’t help but wonder if we had something to do with it. Well, why all of a sudden did you stop loving me? If you’ve ever asked this question, I”m willing to bet they didn’t just ’stop’ loving you.
Usually people tend to start drifting from another person to prepare themselves for the break up, which is completely disrespectful and unfair. I use to do this as a teenager. I knew that I wanted to break it off but I would give myself about three months to get ready for it so by the time I broke up with them, I was fine to go on about my business. This probably made it even harder on the other person and probably made it hurt even worse. Why? They couldn’t understand how it was so easy for me to break up with them and move on. Little did they know that I had been preparing for months.
It’s somewhat deceptive and very misleading to stay in a relationship when you know you want out. It’s not fair to the other person and you’re selfishness and more concern about your own feelings leave the other feeling empty, insecure and full of questions. They just want to know why. But, you’ve been going through the process for three months that by the time you get to that day, all you can say is “It’s not you, it’s me”.
You are already so over it that you don’t even want to take the time to explain what made you decide this three months earlier. It’s not fair and it’s wrong. A quick way to realize how unacceptable this is, is when someone does it to you. It really puts this into perspective and allows you to learn a great lesson in how to treat people.
The fear of rejection can have serious effects on who we are and what we want to become. Where you rejected by your mother or father at an early age? Did you grow up feeling rejected? When you grow up with a fear of rejection, you tend to make choices based on that fear rather than the right choices you need to make. Have you ever stayed in a relationship that was all wrong just because you were afraid of being rejected? Did you do things you normally wouldn’t do because of the fear of rejection?
Some of us do wild things just to avoid rejection but what we don’t notice is that we are probably hurting worse then we would if we were rejected. Again, rejection is a part of life. The sooner you learn how to cope with it and grow from it, the better off you’ll be in the long run.
We all have a choice. We all have a choice in how we decide to deal with rejection. We can harp on it and dwell on it or we can dust off our boots and move on to bigger and better things. Try not to go inward and put blame on yourself. Never put yourself down or be negative because you were rejected. Think of it as someone doing you a favor. If there are certain things you were doing wrong in the relationship, learn from it. Don’t take it with you in the next relationship. Be sure to take time to get over the previous relationship and rejection before you jump into another one.
