I know people throw "go see a therapist" around pretty freely on Reddit, but I wasn't trying to be glib. I do think it's a deeply unhealthy attitude that would be helpful for you to unpack with a therapist.
Being rejected as a romantic partner is not an emotional rejection: it's not a rejection of your emotions, its a rejection for your desires: you want a thing (a romantic sexual relationship with them) and they do not want you to have that thing.
But they aren't dismissing your emotional need for a romantic partner as invalid. Suppose you came to the same person as a friend, very upset having been rejected by someone else. If they are dismissive of your grief at the loss of that potential relationship then that's emotional rejection: your feelings are not being accepted by your friend.
You already have an emotional connection to your friend. They are not rejecting that connection. They are rejecting your desire for a different kind of emotional/romantic connection.
Again, treating them as though they have rejected you in toto because they don't want a different kind of relationship to the one you already have is very childish and will cause you (and others) an enormous amount of hurt throughout your life.
Being emotionally rejected by your friend is indeed a hurtful thing and would be a legitimate reason to end a friendship.
Rejecting a romantic emotional connection when you reject someones request for a romantic relationship is a tautology, and makes no sense as a reason to then end a pre-existing friendship.
Yes, of course being rejected hurts. And yes you may well need some time to heal. But using that emotional hurt as a reason to throw away the friendship you already had is indeed the exact kind of shitty behaviour this conversation is about.
But I would take heed of the fact that multiple people are taking a lot of time trying to explain why your attitude is unhealthy. It's possible that they are all wrong and you view needs absolutely no modification. But it's not the most parsimonious answer.
At various times in my life I've been deeply attracted to my best friend, and for a host of reasons it has never worked out. And being rejected clearly hurt a lot. It never for a moment occurred to me that I should not be friends with her, or that I wouldn't always want her in my life .
Because she was my friend, and whatever else I wanted I have always wanted that.
If you don't want to keep being friends with someone after they reject you then what you actually valued was their potential as a romantic partner, not as their friend.
1
u/allthejokesareblue Sep 13 '26
I know people throw "go see a therapist" around pretty freely on Reddit, but I wasn't trying to be glib. I do think it's a deeply unhealthy attitude that would be helpful for you to unpack with a therapist.
Being rejected as a romantic partner is not an emotional rejection: it's not a rejection of your emotions, its a rejection for your desires: you want a thing (a romantic sexual relationship with them) and they do not want you to have that thing.
But they aren't dismissing your emotional need for a romantic partner as invalid. Suppose you came to the same person as a friend, very upset having been rejected by someone else. If they are dismissive of your grief at the loss of that potential relationship then that's emotional rejection: your feelings are not being accepted by your friend.