Rejection: how do you handle it?

TheGoodTheBadTheHOT
Typical question you might think. Well now for the twist:

How do you handle rejection when you are the one giving it?

Now, a lot of focus on this site is directed towards the receiving end of rejection but very little mention is given to the person who has to face the potentially disastrous situation head-on and put what they saw as a friendship on the line.

I'm going to leave the limits of this question quite wide open. As in the situation you talk about could be anything from a drunken encounter to a proposal. Its more fun that way.

Personally, I've never had to deal with someone asking me to marry them (thank the flying spaghetti monster) nor have I even had to deal with turning down someone asking me out. My experience in the matter of full-on rejection is limited to the receiving side (oh woe is me) but when it comes to giving out what I like to call 'semi-rejection', I'm quite an expert.

This semi-rejection (mostly) applies to those aforementioned drunken encounters where awkward situations are easy to come by and hellish to get away from:

- there's the 'easy' ones where its a complete stranger and you have no reservations about being a d*** so you just laugh and turn away (sorry to the masses of ladies I've hurt by doing this. Its me, not you.)

- then comes the tricky ones where its an acquaintance, this requires a bit more finesse and in some severe cases the need of a friend/group of friends to provide an escape route. This is where the (admittedly wrong) gender stereotype of women not being 'allowed' to approach men without seeming needy, comes in handy. Once you've escaped, you have to be really unlucky to get back in the same situation

- and now, the epitome of all awkwardness. The person who thinks you are gay. There is very little you can do against this, aside from take it head on (pun definitely NOT intended where guys are concerned) leaving you with the only option of pushing rejection right in their face. Well at least that was my experience, that guy was persistent.

Anyway that was a little tangent of the kinds of rejections I've had to give, I've been relatively lucky all things considered. On top of that, my experiences are (obviously) limited to the male role in giving rejection, I have literally no insight as to why women p****-foot around the matter with complete strangers and use white lies instead of the truth to friends. Hear that ladies? Get answering too!

How do you give rejections?
Rejection: how do you handle it?
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