Aiming For Rejection

Never ask someone out unless you'll be disappointed with them rejecting you. After all, if you don't actually mind them declining your advances then you probably don't really dig them as much as you think you do anyway.

If course this is based on the approach that you need an argument or case to ask someone out, and flies in the face of the other side that says you can only develop things fully after being explicit and so should give everyone a go, you know just in case.

Of course I'm not saying that you should aim for rejection just to prove that your feelings are correct - I'm not that much of a masochist. However it may be a better situation to be in than being received positively and then finding out that you don't actually like the person after all; although perhaps not at first since a yes is always awesome for the ego, whatever your real feelings.

It's difficult to know how you'd feel about someone saying yes or no either way, but I think it's possible if you really think about it. You could perhaps place some distance between the two of you to simulate rejection or something?

Ultimately though you might never really know until you do the deed. In that case, perhaps the best thing to do is to just stop makings excuses and take the plunge? I suspect that a rejection is better than not knowing at all, and deliberating about it all may just be a terribly inefficient way of getting the exact same answers.

Originally drafted 2nd August 2008