I’ve recently come across a friend from childhood(teenage) and I’ve been considering getting in touch with him but I’m afraid he could reject me and say he doesn’t remember me.
Of course,it doesn’t matter if he really doesn’t remember me,but I’m afraid what if he just say that because he doesn’t want to be in contact with me?
I think I sometimes have issues with rejection in general.
Eg: I might be at the shops or somewhere and notice a girl looking a me (no idea why) and then I will give them a friendly smile but they will not smile back and I feel rejected when I was trying to be nice.
I always take it as a personal reflection of me.
Does anyone have any advice please?
You might try putting yourself in the place of others and come to see your openness as a good trait that inevitably exposes you to responses that will initially feel like (and may actually be) rejections.
For instance, you wouldn’t be able to go back, name every childhood friend you ever had, and describe their adult appearance to a sketch artist, would you? If you could, you are unusual. If you open yourself to being recognized, then, that is fine, but realize you are opening yourself to being not recognized. Mercy bids you to be forgiving in advance of anyone who doesn’t connect your present face with someone they knew long ago.
So, what if you were to pretend you didn’t know someone that you do know, just because you don’t want contact? Well, first off, can you imagine actually doing that? The person is more likely than not to take that as an indication that you need to have your memory jogged. It isn’t all that likely that someone will fake this.
What if someone does remember you and doesn’t want to renew the friendship? You don’t really want everyone you ever knew to want to be a close friend, do you? Really think hard before you respond “yes.” Some of you really are not cut out to be close friends, because the fit is not good on one side or the other. Ask yourself this, then: are you willing to give someone else the freedom to decide you are not a good fit for them on the premise that you, too, need the freedom to decide that most of the perfectly-wonderful people in this world are not a good fit for you? Yes, I mean see yourself as the person willing to take the hit in order to open a possibility when all such possibilities should not come to full fruition, even in an ideal world (with temporal boundaries, that is). Give others the freedom to choose to take the bridges you offer or not.
As for the girl, realize that women in our times have to be somewhat wary of males they do not know, but especially those who are overly friendly. Predators do not come up to women snarling. They approach with charm. Likewise, men who are not good at being faithful are also likely to be overly friendly with women who are total strangers.
There are people out there who reject others in a way that is self-centered or cruel. There are others who are clumsy and insensitive. This makes life hard on the sensitive souls who are also the most likely to reach out with kindness when no one else will.
You might want to come to see being rejected as a price you pay for being open to real personal relationships with a wide variety of people. That openness is not a bad thing, but it will inevitably ask too much generosity of some who should be more generous, will sometimes ask someone to let down a guard that ought to be up, will sometimes ask someone to act welcoming of flattering attention when they ought to act in a more exclusive manner.
Our Lord comes to all daily with a Love that the beloved actually do need, in a way that they do not need to have an intimate connection with everyone they know. Our Lord went to the Cross knowing that some would reject Him initially and some would reject him for all time. That caused him suffering. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how many times I yearned to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were unwilling!” (Lk 13:34)
To love on a supernatural plane requires suffering, because not all those who need love are ready to return it. Likewise, to love and befriend on a natural plane is the same and more so, because we aren’t set up to be close friends with everyone in this life, but only a relative few, since we are bounded by limits on our time and energy.
It is a nice thing to send out invitations to human interaction in the way a spider sends out eggs, but you have to do it as a spider does, knowing that most of your bids for contact will not fall on the conditions necessary for survival. Our Lord offers you a reliable love, a reliable acceptance that asks not that you deserve it but only that you admit that you don’t, that you admit you come to the relationship in utter poverty. Keep up that relationship, and your ability to forgive those who disappoint you because of some poverty in themselves or in you will be something are more able to bear magnanimously. It will take some practice, but you can get there, sensitive soul. You can get there.
Yes, there is a wrong way to approach people, wrong because they hear and see something very different than the message you intended to send. Other than learning where you are sending a different message than you intended to send, I agree with those who say that rejection is simply part of being open to connection. That doesn’t mean that people who understand this never hurt. It is that they can learn to shake off the hurt as worth the effort they are making. If you find you are suffering more hurts than you can recover from, then dial back the number
a bit. Stick with it, though. A healthy willingness to love your neighbor is in the direction of being willing to absorb hurts and have them healed, not in the direction of avoiding everything that causes pain.
