Rejecting Someone Can Be Easier Done Than Said

Being single means always having to say you’re sorry.

It also means having other people tell you they’re sorry.

In the unpredictable world of dating, just about everybody rejects on occasion, and just about everybody gets rejected. By no fault of either party, attraction is not always mutual.

“Rejection is an absolute integral part of putting yourself out there,” said Howard Halpern, a New York psychologist and author who specializes in relationship problems. “Rejection need not be a statement about your ‘rejectability’ just because the mix with another person was wrong.”

From high school onward, the uncommitted must wrestle with the mirror tasks of accepting defeat graciously or administering it kindly.

The act of rejection can be easier done than said--which is why some people don’t say anything. Instead, they just disappear and hope no one notices their absence. Those are the passive rejecters--the men who simply stop telephoning, the women who simply stop returning calls.

Then there are the white liars, expert at inventing reasons for their unavailability. Other rejecters are downright blunt, presenting victims with a detailed list of their perceived shortcomings.

Where is the happy--or, at least, tolerable--medium? Is honesty always the best policy, or do fibs have their place?

As with most matters of the heart, opinions vary.

“I value honesty in a relationship, especially in the end,” Jeff Foster, 26, of Orange wrote Single Life. “I would like a woman to tell me why I don’t measure up, or what I did wrong, or even that she has met someone else. It’s hard to hear at the time, but in the long run I think it’s better for everyone. Why won’t women say ‘no’?

“Why won’t they say ‘I don’t want to see you anymore’ instead of giving excuses, not returning phone calls and indefinitely postponing broken dates?” the computer programmer complained in his letter.

Never once, Foster claimed in an interview, has a woman who didn’t want to see him again leveled with him at the conclusion of what he considered a pleasant evening.

“Then when you do call, you can hear in her voice, ‘Oh, my God, when I told him he could call again, I didn’t mean for him to call again!’ It’s icky and horrible. I’ve even gotten the old line, ‘I’m washing my hair next Thursday night.’

“ ‘No, thank you’ can be said nicely, and will save you the embarrassment of calling back. It can be done the way they do it in job interviews, where you don’t even realize they’re not interested in you until you’ve walked out the door.”

“I’m pretty honest myself in dating, because I want people to be honest with me,” concurred recent divorcee Joan, 44, a teacher in Irvine who requested anonymity. “You can be honest without being insensitive,” she said in an interview.

“When I find myself on a date with someone I know I’m not interested in, I’m careful not to lead him on. If he expresses interest in me, I say something like, ‘You’re a really nice person, but I just don’t see us developing a relationship.’ I would prefer that men be honest with me also.”

Ann Landers, that sage of our times, registers a strong vote for straightforwardness. In one of Landers’ recent advice columns, a woman fed up with false hope penned an open letter to men:

“After the first date, if you are not interested in seeing the woman again, say thank you and good night. Do not say you will call. When the woman has enjoyed herself and the man says he will call, (but) no call comes, she is hurt. There is a feeling of betrayal.”

Landers replied that people who engage in “this brand of duplicity” are “jerks.”

Halpern takes a more tempered view.

“Almost all people hate that situation of feeling they’re hurting someone’s feelings,” he pointed out. “So a woman will say, ‘Sure, call me,’ when she knows very well she’s not interested. Then the guy is bewildered when he does call and gets turned down. Or a man will say, ‘Sure, I’ll call,’ knowing full well that he won’t.”

“I’m not by nature someone who goes around hurting people,” said Holly, 27, a restaurant manager in Costa Mesa. “I absolutely despise having to reject people. Except in a few cases where the guy has acted like a complete jerk all night, I don’t think I’ve ever once told someone to his face, ‘No, don’t call again.’ I can’t imagine saying that.”

“It may not be any kinder,” she said in an interview, “but I usually let the guy call me, put him off for a few days, then say, ‘Well, gee, I’m beginning to get serious with someone, and we’ve just decided to see each other exclusively.’

“Likewise, I’d just as soon someone let me down easy. I once had a guy say to me at the end of our third or fourth date, ‘I’m not going to call again because I don’t find you very interesting.’ Nice guy, huh? I’d much rather he would have just mysteriously faded away.”

Halpern does not deem tactful prevaricating an automatic sin. “I think white lies are OK,” he said. “For example, there are situations where you sense the person has low self-esteem, and you don’t want to add to it. You might say that a past love interest has come back into your life.

“But if you’re going to lie, you should do it so it can work. If you have mutual friends and there’s a chance the person will find out you lied, take another approach.

“In most situations,” Halpern added, “it’s best to be direct: ‘I like you, but I’m not having the kind of feelings that I need to have to go further.’ ” He suggested that a little self-deprecating humor might lighten the blow--something along the lines of, “It’s not you. Maybe I’m only attracted to crazy people and you’re sane.”

Halpern says women are “much more practiced at saying no” than men. “From the time they are teen-agers, boys for the most part do the asking and girls, if they’re not interested, have to find a way to say no. They’ve honed their method, although rejection is never something they love doing or are comfortable with.

“Men only know how to run away, which often means that they suddenly quit calling. But today, men also are learning to actively reject. Unlike a couple of decades ago, where if you didn’t call the woman that was it, women are starting to call men and say, ‘I haven’t heard from you.’ ”

All things said and done--or, as the case may be, not said and not done--”there is no good way to reject. There are only better and worse ways,” Halpern noted.

To use a weathered and often hard-to-swallow cliche: Don’t take it personally.

“You have to give the other person the right to have a preference that may not be you,” Halpern said. “Remember that you yourself have rejected some really nice people who just weren’t for you, for whatever reason. But they might be fine for somebody else.

“Just because someone prefers a delicious apple over a lovely, ripe pear doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with the pear.”