Rejection and Emotional Baggage
Relationship Counseling: Pre-Marital Counseling: Dating
Occasionally, I will get a client who is ambivalent about sexual relations. They will address their sexual relationship in a manner that gives the feeling as though they are “sleeping with the enemy”.
Obviously, it’s important to explore ambivalent attitudes about the opposite sex. It’s also necessary to seek out and integrate what the client had experienced in their past that created such negative and ambivalent feelings.
However, it seems like I am seeing a great many men and women, who have been emotionally trampled by the boundary confusion that accompanies most dating in our society. Unfortunately, most of us seem to assume that people need simply to develop the emotional armoring to withstand this sort of turmoil; and that a lack of armoring is a result of a traumatized personality.
Frankly, we need to accept that dating does open people up to rejection. Repeated rejection or traumatic rejection can be damaging to one’s sense of worth and self-esteem. This sort of emotional injury can be especially true for someone who meets someone who seems to be a good match and subsequently rejected. I’ve seen this in myself and my clients. It might take a couple of years before one finds someone who might fit the bill for becoming a potential mate. Expectations are built up. After the rejection comes the loss of the potential mate, and the prospect that it might again be years before another possible mate is located again rears its ugly head. It’s common to see the rejected person go through a full-fledged grief reaction. The rejected partner may not be in shape to start their search again until they have fully mourned the loss of their love object.
Interestingly, unless the rejected person has mourned this loss sufficiently, they can just go onto the next relationship, depressed and angry, unable to enter fully into the new relationship. Unfortunately, I’ve seen a good many single men and women go through this process until they generalize their feelings to all members of the opposite sex. Destructive relationships then simply become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I will talk about dealing with rejection in another posting. However, I will say that it is extremely important to mourn the loss of a seriously potential partner fully. I had an instructor who once said: “It’s important to say good-bye fully to the last partner so that you can say hello to the next one.” The last thing you want to do is allow past rejections to detract from your ability to be open to the one relationship that will work for you.
Occasionally, I will get a client who is ambivalent about sexual relations. They will address their sexual relationship in a manner that gives the feeling as though they are “sleeping with the enemy”.
Obviously, it’s important to explore ambivalent attitudes about the opposite sex. It’s also necessary to seek out and integrate what the client had experienced in their past that created such negative and ambivalent feelings.
However, it seems like I am seeing a great many men and women, who have been emotionally trampled by the boundary confusion that accompanies most dating in our society. Unfortunately, most of us seem to assume that people need simply to develop the emotional armoring to withstand this sort of turmoil; and that a lack of armoring is a result of a traumatized personality.
Frankly, we need to accept that dating does open people up to rejection. Repeated rejection or traumatic rejection can be damaging to one’s sense of worth and self-esteem. This sort of emotional injury can be especially true for someone who meets someone who seems to be a good match and subsequently rejected. I’ve seen this in myself and my clients. It might take a couple of years before one finds someone who might fit the bill for becoming a potential mate. Expectations are built up. After the rejection comes the loss of the potential mate, and the prospect that it might again be years before another possible mate is located again rears its ugly head. It’s common to see the rejected person go through a full-fledged grief reaction. The rejected partner may not be in shape to start their search again until they have fully mourned the loss of their love object.
Interestingly, unless the rejected person has mourned this loss sufficiently, they can just go onto the next relationship, depressed and angry, unable to enter fully into the new relationship. Unfortunately, I’ve seen a good many single men and women go through this process until they generalize their feelings to all members of the opposite sex. Destructive relationships then simply become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I will talk about dealing with rejection in another posting. However, I will say that it is extremely important to mourn the loss of a seriously potential partner fully. I had an instructor who once said: “It’s important to say good-bye fully to the last partner so that you can say hello to the next one.” The last thing you want to do is allow past rejections to detract from your ability to be open to the one relationship that will work for you.
posted by Jacob Spilman, LPC, LMFT at 12:00 PM
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