Being rejected and giving second chances/renewed pursuit

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OK in one case they heard a vicious rumor that I was gay (a rumor started my soon-to-be ex-wife who knew the person I had some interest in, and BTW I did not ask them out until the divorce was filed), a rumor which started when I allowed an employee of my start-up company (we did this at my place) to use the shower at my place as he lived at home but had a horrible relationship with his father who was alcoholic and who prevented him from using the shower there that morning. I was on the computer in the master bedroom doing some number crunching for the start-up while he was in the master bedroom shower (around a corner out of view I might add). I would have let him use the other bathroom but my ex's daughter was using it. The ex also said I walked gay (probably because I have this genetic thing where I walk on the outside of my feet and nobody in my family caught it in time to do the operation to correct it).

I heard back that this rumor had been originally believed by the woman I wanted to go out with, but my ex's son (who knew that person well also) told her I was as straight as they come (we'd even been talking about seeing hot women and played the usual guy thing of "would you do her?"), so she asked for a second chance, and I proceed to tell her to shove it.

Another time it happened was in college when a friend of mine "got" the girl I wanted and after they broke up she told me she was sorry she'd turned me down and realized I was more her type (translation: he was a jerk-player) and wanted to go out, which I refused.

Two other times it happened online where the women formed friendships with me but turned me down in the romance department, then proceeded to meet other men on those forums, then the men were bad and they broke up and one lady had the nerve to ask me to give her a second chance, which I refused. That's were the thing about "knowing what you want" and all that came in - I read her the riot act about being wishy-washy and being attracted to jerks and that I was not going to be her doormat and let her pull BS on me, and that if she couldn't see me as prize material up front despite the flashy rejects who pretend to be quality men she was a 'politically-incorrect euphemisms for being stupid'.

I do not forget slights.

When she originally rejected you, did she bring up a reason that you were gay or did she bring up false reasons?

If she was honest and told you she thought you were gay BACK AT THE TIME SHE REJECTED YOU, did you try to argue against it and refute it? If so, did she blantly tell you that you were lying and didn't believe you, or did she say "oh I believe you are not gay, but, by the way ... (insert a fake reason) ...", or what happened? If you didn't try to refute her, why not?

On the other hand, if she never told you she thought you were gay UNTIL she found out she was wrong and was appologising for it, did you ask her how come she never told you earlier? You should have pointed out to her a GENERAL falacy of her thinking that she ONLY brings things up when she knows she is on the wrong, but she never confronts the other person with these things when she thinks THEY are on the wrong, which means she never gives anyone who is "on the wrong" a chance to defend themselves.

Granted, you didn't want to be with her any more anyway. But you should habe been arguing with her about these things regardless. Don't you feel pissed? If you are pissed, you should argue!




These other two examples that you gave don't seem to match what you describe in original post. I mean, they have nothing to do with someone believing some rumors and then finding out they are wrong. Rather, it has to do with them breaking up with someone else so now they are "available" to date their "second choice".

You're right concerning the earlier cases I was just in a bad mood and trying to lump in all the "bad" people in one fell swoop. Sorry! It was about me being judged to be inferior then the two others realizing I was the catch they'd passed on. Point being that a perceived shortfall in character is similar to being judged wrong insofar as how both kinds of situation made me feel.

As for the person who turned me down due to the gay rumor they only admitted the real reason after the fact. They had shown some interest, then done a fade. I put the question to my ex's son of why he thought she was fading, he being really good with people (especially women - the irony is that he and I are still friendly). Anyway my ex and the lady in question (the mother of my ex's son's friend) were talking which is where the rumor got passed (my ex is from Hell as you may have noticed), then later the ex's son steered her to the real truth after hearing the lie from his mom (my ex), at which point he talked to the lady and asked me to call her as she was obviously embarrassed and wanted to straighten things out. It was only then she told me and then that I told her no second chance. I was ruthlessly angry and self-protective when talking with her. You might ask why I took the trouble to call when my mind had been made up not to give her a second chance - well I wanted to rub it in her face BIGTIME. I hate to say it (not really!) but sometimes revenge can feel better than sex.

I completely understand. I am the same way: being judged as inferior is what pisses me off the most, and typically when I rant about ppl judging me, I lump together different cases, too -- as you might gather from reading my posts. I hate how ppl are judgemental.



How did she do the fade? Did she literally stopped returning your calls, or did she say she is busy? The reason I am asking is that if she said she is busy thats a lie since she wasn't actually "busy". If she stopped returning your calls, then she didn't lie, but at the same time she was even more rude.



Then how come so much time had to pass until she learned you are not gay? And what did your son originally tell you when he went and found out, while she was still fading?



Good job on confrontation part! I wish everyone did the same.

And I totally understand your reason for calling despite not wanting to be with her. I definitely would have called too, to get a revange. In fact, I WISH that some of the ppl who rejected me were to come back and be interested in me, just so that I can show them revenge in the ruddest possible way. Unfortunately I never had such apportunities, but you do.

Ok, this I don't get. Although you aren't gay and that rumour was started deliberately to prevent this girl from approaching you, why does she not get a second chance purely because she believed it? There isn't anything horrible about being gay. It's just a fact about a person. Not a horrible fact. A neutral one. Back in the day I was once told that I was wasting my time pining after a particular man because he was gay. And in fact he was. You aren't and it was said to throw her off deliberately. That's a mean thing to do. But why is she so bad for believing it? You often can't tell just by looking. Is her gaydar supposed to be so finely tuned that she would say "you are wrong" to that person and continue to pursue you and she's a bad person if she doesn't? When I was told My Crush was gay, I backed off because I didn't want to make him uncomfortable. I didn't disbelieve the person on principle and continue to pursue him. I don't see why you were so harsh to her.

What did this girl do wrong? Why did you need revenge against her? She believed it when somebody said you were gay. Ok. You aren't. But why is somebody who believes you are when told so a bad person who needs to be revenged against? There are plenty of marriages that end when one person comes out. It's a very common scenario. Why was she supposed to assume this couldn't possibly be true about yours? In my 40+ years I've known many gay people and only a fraction of them pinged my (admittedly weak) gaydar and I didn't find out till told. If I was told by a 3rd party, I didn't confront them because that would be unspeakably rude. Unless you know somebody really well, you don't go up to them and say "I heard you were gay? Is that true?". You just don't. So why would this woman violate that politeness protocol and ask you? She didn't. Because people aren't supposed to. And you vilify her for doing what social protocol compells her to do- which is give you your space and not pry into your personal life.

In 2 cases, the person I discovered was gay had previously been married. This is not unique. It's not uncommon. And it's rude to go up to somebody and say "I heard you were gay. Tell me if you are or not." I think you cut her off pretty unfairly when she did nothing wrong.

Obvoiusly, I am not the original poster so I can't speak for him. But let me offer my own perspective on this.

No, if that was the purpose, his wife would have specifically said it to that girl. But notice how he said she spread a rumor and the girl was merely one of the ppl who believed it. So she must have had much greater purpose in mind. Probably that is a combination of preventing ANY girl from approaching him, as well as setting up a bad public image for him. That was probably a revenge for whatever problem they had in marriage, and yes he has a right to be angry at this.



Because she could have double check her belief. Granted, she is not psychic, so she can't innately know he is not gay unless she asks. But why not ask? The fact that there are false rumors about ppl being gay is well known.

Also consider this. I had VERY HARD time finding an advisor at the graduate school I went to, University of Michigan, because there were rumors that I am a bad physicist. By your logic, these professors were not at fault simply because they believed the rumor. Well, except that I got nearly expelled as a result of this. So don't you see how it is unfair that I had to suffer simply because they were TOO LAZY to double check the rumor? And with this girl same thing. No she is not judgemental; she is simply LAZY so she didn't want to bother double checking things. And then he had to pay a prize for her laziness by losing a relationship. Don't you think five minutes it takes to double check things is worth all the years of the wonderful relationship they could have had?



You hit the nail on the head when you called it "politeness protocol". And this is exactly what is wrong with NT-s : they are trying to be polite so they don't confront people. If, at MIchigan, professors were to come up to me and say "we heard from Wells that you are a horrible physicist, is this right?" I would have said "No; the reason Wells said it is because I can't bring myself to learn subject X due to the fact that subject X depends on Grassmann numbers, and grassman numbers are not well defined; but if you give me anything else that avoids Grassmann numbers I would do it just fine". But they were too polite to ask me. So instead they believed the rumor. And then, half a year later, when I was telling them how they are wrong in mis-evaluating me, they again were very polite and they said that they would be happy to work with me, they were just "too busy", so they didn't give me a chance to defend myself.

Now, I DO see that asking someone "are you a horrible physicist" or "are you gay" or anything else of that nature is rude. But if someone is rude to me, for how long would it spoil my mood? Well may be a day or so. But if they made bad assumptions about me, for how long does it affect me? In case of Michigan it affected me for three years. So, even if there is a TINY bit of chance that they were wrong and that this day would fix three years, don't you think it is wroth it? So the big question is how come they cared about me SO MUCH that they didn't want me to suffer even for a day, and at the same time they cared about me SO LITTLE that they were willing to subject me to hell on earth for 3 years?

But then agian, the other thing that happened is that whenever I was telling professors how my IDEAL subject to work on happens to be something obscure they concluded that I won't be interested in working in their field, and, no matter how many times I was telling them that yes I am more than willing to do exactly what THEY do and I don't take a crap whether or not what I work on is my area of interest I just want to stay in school, they would still not give me a project. So apparently they DO care about me more than I do. They want me to work on something ideal, while I can take anything. So if they think my needs are SOOOO important that I have to work on EXACTLY what I wnat to work on, then OF COURSE they can't make me uncomfortable for a single minute, let alone a day, by confronting me for being bad physicist. After all I am sooooo overly sensititve, I need to be told I am PERFECT physicist they just don't have time to work with me, and I also need to be given EXACTLY what I like. One can only wonder why they didn't care at all if I will be expelled or not.



1) By that logic there is nothing horrible about prostitution or incest as long as these are done by two concenting adults. Also drug users shouldn't be jailed as long as they don't force anyone else to do that, after all THEY have a good time don't they.

2) Even if you believe gay is neutral, a lot of ppl look down on it. So why not double check this just so that he won't be looked down upon unnecessary

3) When they were trying to expell me they were also telling me that I don't have to be a physicist, I can be an engeneer, an artist, etc. so what is all this fuss about? It is NEUTRAL to change fields, isn't it?

4) If she were to double check it she could have stopped the rumor. But as she procrastinated the rumor had spread so far that now one can't possibly track it down and tell EVERYONE who heard that rumor that he is straight.



Exactly. And now EVERYONE who knows the marriage ended assumes it is because he is gay due to these rumors. Do you see how hard it is to reverse it now? And if she were to double check it, she could have stopped the rumor at its inception.

Janissey, I agree; I would never ask a colleague straight out if he were gay. I know of people who are rumoured to be so, but as it's none of my business, I don't mention it.

Polymathpoolplayer, it was a horrible rumour for your wife to spread, but how was the other woman to know it was all lies? As Jannisey said, it's considered very rude to ask someone straight out about their sexual orientation. The fact that she came back so quickly when he found out you weren't gay shows that this woman probably had quite strong feelings all along, she was just repressing them because she thought she hadn't a chance. Telling her to shove off because she wasn't a mind reader and had manners was a bit unkind and quite stupid; you lost what could have been a good relationship simply because of an over-sensitive ego.

Good job on confrontation part! I wish everyone did the same.

And I totally understand your reason for calling despite not wanting to be with her. I definitely would have called too, to get a revange. In fact, I WISH that some of the ppl who rejected me were to come back and be interested in me, just so that I can show them revenge in the ruddest possible way. Unfortunately I never had such apportunities, but you do.[/quote
OK she just faded entirely - did not return calls or emails.

It took time because I first had to get to the point where the ex moving out got taken care of so I could again talk to her son about possibly working for me and that's when he told me about the exchange between my ex and the other lady about me being gay.

She gets no second chance because it it patently obvious that #1: I am not gay and #2: the ex said this to mess with my life (remember, she's stolen from me, used drugs and had affairs too) So she is effect the puppet of a propaganda machine.

OK I will say it again - I am not gay, despite being a musician with the typical body language that might tend to have people think that, but no more so than other musicians - it's that I'm graceful. But I do have a history of having lots of gfs and also a couple of gay people tried to hit on me, with one of those resulting in me punching him out, etc. (he did this in my private house and would not take no for an answer.) BTW one of my best friends who is gay says it's ludicrous that anyone should believe I am as my history of "chasing" women speaks for itself. BTW the ex said the gay business because she knew it would push my buttons and just because she's evil - to rob me of a chance with another woman.

And yes, if I had learned that someone called someone else gay then it was disproven I would actually go up to the person and share their anger - that's just me, though.

The over-riding issue is that I hate it when people mis-judge me, like some NT friends who look at my "blank face" and guess that I'm either angry or arrogant. I don't forgive judgmentalism. I do not judge others until their own acts hang themselves.