There is a conversation we need to have about loneliness, dating, sex, companionship and rejection. A grown one.
There is a conversation we need to have about loneliness, dating, sex, companionship and rejection. A grown one.
Photo by Rosa Rafael
Because loneliness is real. Wanting love is real. Wanting somebody to come home to is real. Sexual desire is real. So is the ache of watching other people pair off while wondering whether anybody will ever choose you.
None of that deserves ridicule. But compassion becomes dangerous when we quietly turn another human being into the remedy.
A society can help people meet. We can build healthier communities. We can make room for friendship, recreation, social groups, faith communities, hobbies, dating services and all kinds of places where adults can encounter one another.
We can teach people how to communicate better. We can encourage kindness in dating. We can take loneliness seriously instead of laughing at it.
There is quite a bit we can do.
What we cannot do is guarantee the answer yes.
And increasingly, I think that distinction deserves far more attention.
Sometimes the problem isn’t finding an opportunity. It is encountering a refusal.
Imagine a man wants to meet a woman.
There are women at work, at church, online, at social events, on dating apps, at concerts, in classes, at the gym, at community gatherings and everywhere else people meet.
Eventually, he asks one woman out. She says no.
Now watch where the conversation goes.
Why won’t she give him a chance?
Are her standards too high?
Does she really know what she wants?
Maybe she should reconsider.
What kind of man would she date?
Is she being shallow?
Why doesn’t she explain herself?
Could she at least go for coffee?
Suddenly, we aren’t solving the problem of two people finding each other. We are trying to solve the problem of one particular woman having made a decision somebody doesn’t like.
“No” creates disappointment. It does not create an injustice.
This is where empathy needs a backbone. Rejection hurts.
I don’t think we need to pretend otherwise to defend women’s freedom. Anybody who has loved somebody who didn’t love them back knows rejection can sting something awful. It can embarrass you. Bruise your confidence. Make you wonder what somebody else had that you didn’t.
Human beings deserve some grace around those feelings. But pain does not automatically mean someone wronged us. A woman can disappoint a man without mistreating him.
She can decline a date with a perfectly decent person.
She can decide against another date after a lovely first one.
She can decide that a relationship she once wanted is one she no longer wants.
She can refuse sex with somebody she loves.
She can change her mind.
There does not have to be a villain in the story.
Sometimes one person wants something from another person, and the other person says no. That is ordinary human freedom.
Women know there can be a price for saying it.
Women have good reason to think carefully about rejection.
In a study of 465 adults, women reported greater concern than men about consequences from rejecting unwanted romantic or sexual advances, including being yelled at or hit. Women were also more likely to use safety strategies when rejecting someone, such as getting away or calling another person.
Sometimes what looks like an unnecessarily gentle rejection from the outside is a woman trying to get herself safely through an unpredictable interaction.
I have a boyfriend.
I’m really busy right now.
I’m not looking for anything serious.
Maybe another time.
I’m just focusing on myself.
People sometimes ask why women don’t simply say what they mean. Some do. Others have learned that no can require strategy.
That isn’t imaginary. Research on what scholars call post-refusal sexual persistence has documented continued attempts to obtain sexual contact after someone has already refused. In one university study, women reported experiencing such tactics more frequently than men, including emotional manipulation, lies, intoxication-related tactics, restraint and threats.
Another qualitative study examined young men’s understanding of refusals and found something particularly important: the men studied were capable of recognizing refusal, while coercive behavior could continue beyond it. The researchers argued that simply telling women to communicate their refusals more clearly can miss the problem when the refusal has already been understood.
That changes the question. Sometimes we don’t need to teach women a better way to say no. We need to teach greater respect for the no already spoken.
More choices cannot mean less choice for women.
We live in an era with extraordinary avenues for connection. A person can search for romance according to geography, religion, age, interests, hobbies and lifestyles. People can join clubs, travel groups, gaming communities, professional organizations, social groups and enormous online communities.
Technology can increase the number of people we encounter. What technology cannot manufacture is mutual desire. And that little word mutual carries the whole thing.
You can increase opportunities to meet women. You cannot promise access to a woman.
You can help somebody become a better dating partner. You cannot make somebody date him.
You can encourage people to give one another a fair hearing. You cannot require attraction.
You can care about male loneliness. You cannot cure it with female obligation.
Because the moment somebody else’s autonomy becomes the proposed treatment for your unhappiness, we have crossed an important line.
bell hooks understood something about love that belongs here.
Black feminist writer bell hooks spent a remarkable amount of her work thinking about love, domination and what men themselves lose when control gets mistaken for connection.
In All About Love, she wrote:
“Love and abuse cannot coexist.”
Elsewhere, she wrote that choosing love means moving against domination and toward freedom. I appreciate that framing because it refuses an unnecessarily cruel choice. We do not have to choose between caring about men and respecting women.
Teaching boys and men that another person’s freedom remains intact even when it hurts them is not abandonment. That is preparation for relationship. A pre-requisite.
A man who can hear no, grieve disappointment, maintain his dignity and continue living has learned something necessary for love. So has a woman who understands that compassion does not require surrendering her decision.
Some affirmations for women learning to trust their no
I can recognize another person’s disappointment without making myself responsible for curing it. I will be humane where I can. I will not exchange my freedom for somebody else’s relief.
I don’t need evidence that someone is terrible before deciding they are not right for me. Dating is not a trial where I must prove wrongdoing. Mutual desire is enough reason to begin, and its absence is enough reason not to.
My no does not become less legitimate because somebody asks me to explain it beautifully. I may explain when I choose. I may also decide that the answer itself is sufficient.
Changing my mind is part of having a mind. Yesterday’s yes does not purchase tomorrow’s yes. Affection, history, gifts, marriage, attention and effort do not eliminate my continuing ability to choose.
I can have compassion without becoming available. Those two things were never synonyms.
And perhaps this is where we need to land.
We should absolutely care about human loneliness.
Build community. Help people make friends. Teach healthy courtship. Raise children who know how to communicate. Give boys and men richer emotional lives than conquest, performance and romantic validation. Create places where people can meet. Help people survive heartbreak without humiliation.
There is good work waiting for everybody.
But after we have built every bridge we know how to build, another person’s body and companionship remain on the other side of one final door.
Consent.
She opens it. Or she doesn’t. And a humane society has to be able to survive both answers.
Because a society can increase opportunities for connection. It cannot ethically solve rejection by reducing women’s freedom to reject.
That isn’t hostility toward love. It is one of the conditions that makes love worthy of the name.
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