When I was a little girl I used to pretend to play hide-and-go-seek at lunch so no one would notice I had no friends.
Being one of the only Chinese girls in my school I felt desperate to fit in and wanted people to like me and accept me as one of "them". Growing up, the boys I liked, never liked me and I felt rejection.
Perhaps my childhood experience is what brings me to my biggest insecurity today - fear of rejection.
I have created strategies and methods to avoid it at all costs - often at the expense of canceling people out of my life, so I can beat them to the punch. Call it being a control freak, call it being insecure, but when I don't get the response expected from someone, I assume the worse and take it personally.
I immediately create a story in my head that "they just aren't that into me" and purge them from my phone, social networks and life. I realize I have a pattern of letting people "go" instead of letting them "be".
Recently, I met someone who expressed interest in me but was going through the stages of a post-breakup of a major relationship. The minute I didn't hear from him, despite his distraught emotional headspace, I did my typical "purge" routine.
Then a dear friend of mine gave me some words of wisdom.
"We've grown up to feel like we always need instant gratification. We always want the boy to like us back right away just because we like them.There is one common thread to wounded birds. They are all trying to re-learn how to fly and they become adamant on changing the way they do life and relationships, for the fear of going back to that broken place".
These words are true and relevant. Many of us (me included) have an expectation of how relationships should play out. And when it doesn't happen according to the "plan", we feel rejected and take it personally, when really, it has nothing to do with you at all.
In this fast-paced world, the speed of things is actually not a normal pace ... we're just so used to it that when things do take a normal pace, we get impatient.
Books such as He's Just Not That into You ring true, however, it's important to remember that every situation, every person, every potential budding of a relationship is different.
I have been relentless trying to be the extreme opposite from that girl in that book who just didn't get the hint - and to be honest, that way of going about relationships has likely kiboshed more opportunities than thwarted potential rejection.
Women whose hearts are like "7 lane superhighways" may find it frustrating when dealing with men who take a slower one-lane, dirt road, but sometimes things just take time. All you can do is "be a friend with no expectations and the both of you will eventually find out if your highway and his road will meet".
Everything happens and doesn't happen for a reason.
I know many women who beat themselves up and get upset when it doesn't work out. All I can say is, it has nothing to do with you. It's not because you aren't pretty enough, smart enough, athletic enough - you are perfect just the way you are.
But when you are with a match that isn't meant to fit, it just doesn't fit. And that's no one's fault or shortcoming.
Being a single girl, meeting different people, giving things a chance to realize that it wasn't a fit, can be exhausting. And while before I would see a negative angle of "it just never works" - I've realized that it's not "working" because it wasn't meant to.
I've learned to just have "faith". Faith and patience that it will all happen when it should happen, and when it does, it's going to be AMAZING. I'm not a religious person, but I'm starting to believe more and more that half of it is fate and half of it is choice.
So have faith in fate to bring the right opportunities with the right people - at the right time, and be open to making and choosing the right decisions when it does.
amyfabulous.com
