Rejected by your crush?

This is for you, who wants to/needs to get over being rejected by someone you have a crush on.

It doesn’t matter how long you’ve dated him/her. (*In the rest of the article I refer to “him”, replace it with “her” if you need to). When you get rejected, it’s the same rules and strategies that apply to how to get through it. I’ll give you 3 simple strategies you can use independent of each other. Use the one/ones you feel are related to you and your persona. Remember that this is YOUR journey, so you should do it in your own pace, don’t judge yourself if you don’t feel like your “recovering fast enough”, it’s a process, and we all have our own pace.

Of course you can argue that the longer the relationship, the more you’ve invested yourself, your feelings, your hopes and dreams. And true, the process of coping and healing will be longer, but the techniques and rules are the same. So keep reading and use the rules and techniques according to where you are in the process.

You have to want to/choose to get over it. This also means you have to be ready to put (and yes we all have these:) your inner drama queen and your inner attention seeker aside.

When we get rejected, our brain immediately starts asking questions; why? What happened? What is he up to and finally we turn it inwards; what did I do wrong!? Was it my…was it because I…I did something wrong…

It’s at this point you have to be very alert! You have to stop this self-destructing mind process, because it’s useless!

You didn’t do anything wrong, you are, who you are. If there’s no doubt you did something wrong for instance infidelity, lying, manipulating and so on, you should of course take time to reflect over these aspects about yourself and learn from it. But if you are having thoughts like “was it because I didn’t ask him this and that” or “I wore the wrong clothes” or “I didn’t reply to his text quick enough” and so on, then it’s useless.

When you stop this way of turning it inside, you’ll probably start focusing on “his why”. But, this is also useless because it would only be your best guess, you’ll never know nor will you ever find his true “why”. It’s not even sure he knows this himself.

But it’s okay to dwell on it for a short while, doing a little psychoanalysis and guessing game of why he rejected you. But it is and always will be only guessing, that’s why it’s useless in the long run.

When we fall for someone, we quickly paint a dreamy picture of him. We focus on all the good qualities and get blinded when it comes to the bad signals, hence the saying “love is blind”.

But when the dream suddenly crashes because he dumps you, you can use the blindness in reverse, to your benefit.

Blindness in reverse:

The trick here, is to remove the “he’s perfect filter”. You do that by thinking back on the little things you know you ignored. This can be hard at first, but keep in mind that nobody is perfect, and trust me he wasn’t perfect for you, because then you’d still be together.

You have to set your feelings aside for a moment. Remember, your mind will in this process try to make excuses for him, or that part of your mind with the dreamy picture will. You have to be aware of this and consciously stop them and choose(!) to put them aside, just for this exercise anyway.

Now pinpoint the things you ignored, which you know would drive you crazy in the long run. If it helps you then write them down.

When you find them, you magnify them so they seem like huge flaws. For instance when he chose to hang out with his friend one night, when he knew you were a bit sad or that his laugh annoyed you or he said stupid things and so on.

There are 3 ways to use this method:

• using your logic perspective (LP)
• your experience perspective (EP)
• using your visual perspective (VP).

Method 1, LP:

Logic Perspective is where you choose to set aside your feelings for a moment. Think of him as someone you don’t have feelings for yet and find just one little flaw about him, using your logic.

You now take this flaw and magnify and factualize it. To factualize means that you take a cold hard look at the facts, I’ll demonstrate this in the example below.

Since you’re probably still blinded by your crush, otherwise you probably wouldn’t be reading this article, we have to find the smallest things and blow them up. I will illustrate this using examples in which you can just substitute the flaws I use, with the flaws you found.

Examples:

When it’s something he has done/said

The fact that he chose to hang out with his friends when he knew I was sad: that he priorities/choose/wanted to/felt like this more than being there for me, when I needed it.

Or the fact that he said that the company’s Christmas party was without spouses, when I know it wasn’t shows that he prioritized/chose/wanted to/felt like going as a single guy leaving me behind.

(Give yourself time to close your eyes and really feel and think about each and every question below!)

Would a person in love do this?

Did he have my best interests at heart?

Would I do this to a person I was in love with?

How would I feel if one of my dearest, for instance my friend, mother, father, son, daughter was treated this way?

Am I not worth more than this?

Do I not deserve better than this?

Yes you do and yes you are! He just wasn’t good enough for you, if he was, you’d still be together.

When it’s something with his persona:

The fact that his laugh annoyed me or the fact that he was more fat/skinny than I would usually go for or the fact that he always turned the conversation into being about him etc.

(Give yourself time to close your eyes and really feel and think about each and every question below!)

Is this something I would want to try and change about him in the future?

Is this something that would annoy me tremendously after some time?

How would this personality trait fit in with other parts of my life for instance with my family, friends, workplace etc?

Is it something I’d truly be okay with in my life?

If you’ve managed to stay within your logic and set your feelings aside, you should be able to pinpoint at least one of the listed feelings that his flaw would give you:

Embarrassment

Shame

Anger

Annoyment

Frustration

Irritation

Focus on THAT, not on the dreamy illusion your brain has made him into.

Method 2, EP:

The Experience Perspective is where you pick out the flaws, which you know you’ve experienced in other relationships.

These are your blind spots because of your dreamy feelings. Your red flags, which you have a tendency to ignore. You overlook the red flags waving at you. You know deep down inside, that you should look at these flags, but you choose to overlook them.

These red flags can be personality traits, behavior, characteristics you’ve met before or emotional situations you’ve been in before, which weren’t good for you or didn’t give you anything but grief, anger and so on. Experiences where it hurt you or you got burnt.

Here you look for the small signals you received from the person who just rejected you. The signals which you ignored or you made excuses for, but know from experience are bad signals. For instance: his actions didn’t fit his words, you caught him telling a lie, he was generally acting selfish, your gut feeling told you something wasn’t right, he wasn’t open and welcoming when you were critical or whatever you can see of traits, characteristics, behavior and situations you’ve experienced before.

What is your experience with this trait, characteristic, behavior or situation?

Is it something that would have made you happy in the long run?

Is there a pattern?

Is there some kind of trait, characteristic, behavior or situation which you seem to be attracted to in every guy?

As a bonus to this exercise, if you see a continuous trait or characteristic in all of your ex boyfriends, like for instance selfishness, this could be a clear sign that you need to get more selfish yourself. This, by the theory that you often subconsciously attract the things you are missing yourself. You also feel drawn to the traits and characteristics in others, because these traits and characteristics lie dormant within you.

To break the pattern of attracting the same kind of guy, you would need to take a look at yourself. Are you too selfless, a doormat, a pleaser? You need to look within to find your own balance to being selfish in an appropriate way. When you get in touch with the trait you’re attracted to within yourself, then you won’t attract it from others that much anymore.

If you want to explore this a little deeper in yourself, I can highly recommend Debbie Ford’s books with shadow work.

Method 3, VP:

In the Visual Perspective, first of all you put your realistic goggles on and then you find his (to you) bad traits, characteristics, behavior and appearance. You need to find minimum 1 of the above mentioned.

For instance, you know he lied to you a couple of times (or your gut feeling told you so) or he acted very selfishly or he had bad skin, crooked teeth, skinny legs, a lot of wrinkles or whatever little (or big) thing you’ve noticed. Things you didn’t pay much attention to, because you had your love goggles on.

Now, you close your eyes and take this or these flaws and magnify them big time! Whenever you think of him hereafter, this is the picture you should think of.

Examples:

Liar: picture him with a huge red light, flashing sign over his head that says “FAKE”.

You can also use this visualization in other cases, like if he cheated on you, told you he cheated on an ex girlfriend, if he made you promises that he didn’t keep, if he suddenly wasn’t ready for a relationship, if he made excuses etc.

Selfish: picture him as all blown up like a balloon (filled with himself), with slick hair and arrogance, with an attitude of thinking he’s all that. Picture him with this in a glass box in which he is locked inside so he can never come out, and you can never come in. I bet you wouldn’t want to be in that box with him, you would be choked because there is no room for you. The same would go for the relationship; there would be no room for you.

His appearance: Picture him with bad skin/crooked teeth/skinny legs or whatever, now make his flaw even worse, exaggerate it. His bad skin is now inflamed abscesses all over his face. His crooked teeth and his mouth are now 3 times bigger and spread all over his face. His skinny legs are now more skinny and longer/shorter depending on what you think looks worst. They are pale and the skin is hanging from the bones. His face is now filled with deeper longer wrinkles, he is pale and looks old and worn out.

In other words, make him as ugly in your mind as possible, but based on authentic little things. You can also make a name for him, that you use hereafter, whenever you mention/write/think about him. For instance, you can use Mr. Liar, Mr. Selfish, Mr. Skinny Legs etc. Pick the name/flaw that you believe is worst about him, as a reminder of why you are better of without him.

When you’ve picked one or more of the mentioned visualizations, make it very clear in your mind that this is him. Keep focusing on this every time you think of him and force yourself to make this picture in your mind, as often as you can. This way you’ll slowly erase the useless dreamy picture your brain built of him, whilst you still had your love goggles on.

Hope this will help you on your way back to you!