Mason  🏃‍♂️ ✂️

One of the nice things about leaving a little space between date and rejection is that it's less clear that you're being rejected vs. something/someone else being chosen. Easier to tell yourself that they're not over the ex, or they really are just too busy to date.

I would hope the correct gentle rejection can do this as well. I tell people before I go on a date with them that I can't control my experience of chemistry, and I've had beautiful, wonderful people who I like that I just don't have that spark with.

I think it's something some people are fine hearing, if a bit jarring. For others, it's not, and the person doing the rejecting is not going to be the same one who deals with the fallout.

Much of the time, it doesn't particularly matter either way, because neither person feels a strong attraction. It only really matters when one party really, really wants to pursue something that the other has no real interest in.

So, the other negative thing about being dishonest about attraction that I just realized is bugging me (didn't know where to post in myriad of threads...) A ton of guys have a lot of trouble telling when a girl is in to them. This practice of lying makes them LESS calibrated...

It may make that one interaction go smoother but it makes them questions themselves even more in later interactions (or the opposite, makes them way overconfident in every interaction). It makes the lives of both those men and the women they interact with worse.

I really don't think that part of it has much to do with the means of issuing rejection. Game-playing between people who *want* to date is semi-intentional, generally out of the (sometimes reasonable) fear that showing too much interest will cause the other person to leave

I think I agree that more of it comes from game-playing, but to me they both spring from the deeper frame that leads to both - putting immediate feelings and comfort over deeper values and consequences. You can't disentangle one from the other.