I’ve observed a number of instances where someone seems to court rejection by others. It is as if they need to be rejected as some sort of fullfillment. I’ve tried to think of why this is so and have a couple of possible answers:
A person has decided that they are less than, no good, or are undeserving. They say, or act in ways that are rejected by those around them. The rejection reinforces and “proves” their unworthiness.
A person has decided that they are superior or more knowing than others. They say and act in ways that are rejected by others. This confirms their superior nature or knowing.
That is two possible motives. Are there others? Can this situation be considered ‘normal’? or is it a pathological practice?
I have a friend. Well I’ll hardly call him a friend, he’s often around at social gatherings and I sense he is only invited because people feel sorry for him.
So a couple of weeks ago he comes up to me - we have a strange history, he always looks at my breasts when he talks to me, drives me wild and I have no desire to engage with him because of it. So he comes up to me and says: “People don’t like me”. So I blurt out, “Do you like yourself?” I don’t even think he heard it the first time. Throughout the evening he is behaving in his usual letchurous fashion. At one point I’m standing with a friend, engaged in an intimate converstation when he walks up to me and touches me, my cardigan was falling over my shoulder and he felt it was ok to touch me. I closed my cardigan and told him that it was not ok and that he should not do it. I was shocked and embarrassed. He continued to do it throughout the evening. A lot of the other girls don’t like him, find him creepy. What is his problem? He is continuously rejected by me yet continuously seeks my attention. Frankly doesn’t seem to want to face the reality. We had words later that night, he just doesn’t seem to get social cues.
I think he is quite damaged on some level. I know that his father used to treat him badly, locking him in cupboards and was generally a real bastard to him, part of why I tolerate him I think.
I’ve probably highjacked your thread JT, but I’m thinking that this ‘thriving on rejection’ theme is a serious issue and stems from a deeply damaged place.
Let me show you what a proper thread-hijack is, Agnel.
locking him in cupboards
I think this is definitely the problem. I mean, it was not only one cupboard, but “cupboards”… Hell, I say, a plate of hell!
Hey, you need a bodyguard?
tentative, I’m sorry. I think you are overreacting to this rejection thing. I think these lonely human beings just want attention - specific attention directed to them and for them to hear.
Nobody “court” rejections, unless you are talking about the kind of guy like the one who touches liquidangel at parties…
I’m not over-reacting. I’ve seen this sort of thing time after time. I’m just curious at the possible motives for such behavior. Most folks aren’t exactly looking for rejection…
Why don’t you recite those exact words to the guy rather than using him as an example for you to exercise your pity? Ah…because without that pity the party herd cannot feel superior. You and your totally fabulous friends need that guy so you will have something to whisper about, something to mock: “hahaha…look at him, etc., etc.”
How compassionate. What you should be doing is hunting down that guys father to beat the ever-lovin shit outta him.
Then Uniqor comes along and joins you in the fun, cracking jokes about the guys punishment.
Great work, ladies. Really good.
“Tosses her head and flips her hair…she’s got a whole bunch of nothin’ in there.” - Zappa
While it might be interesting, I’m not concerned about the reason why people reject someone. That’s another thread. I want to know why someone would seek out rejection
Alright, here’s the deal. I’ll give you and Uniqor the first shot. Also, I will have my right hand tied behind my back. I will be blindfolded. I will have fifty-pound weights strapped to my ankles, and I will have stayed up without sleep for fourty-eight hours previous to this event.
When we’re done and I win, I get to take both of you to a party where you will be tied to a chair so that several pitiful people can feel you up.
No no, you idiot. You misunderstand. I fell in and out of love with Uniqor in six minutes and twenty-seven seconds flat.
First I thought to myself “OH MY GOD, I have finally found my Nietzschean princess. Now I must win her love.”
…so I started with the compliments. Then I find out she’s a “he” and I hear the “game over” sound from Pac-Man.
I was pissed, I tell you! Now I must treat Uniqor as my brother rather than my lover, which is okay, but I gotta tell ya’ I was heartbroken when I found out Uniqor had the same tools as me. Now we can’t make any uberbabies, and that totally sucks.
But that picture isn’t you, you idiot. I’ve already seen your picture.
(be back in a second. I gotta meet a friend at the store to get some cronic)
Do people need rejection of some twisted psychological level?
A self defeating patteren is learned behavior that is reinforced with indirrect means. They are issolated, and need a different level of interaction to progress them past these behaviors that drive people away. When I was dealing with an individual with an extreamly annoying attitude. I found it easy to merely ignore them untill I found something worth replying to. I works well if you do it right.
Again it sounds like they are issolated. Maybe the way they view the world gives them an abstract perspective that isn’t easily related to others. I’d say they just need to find someone who’s willing to meet them halfway.
Other things that can issolate people is the people they are used to hanging out with has allowed them to be reinforced for otherwize illogical behavior.
Let me tell you why you are cheesy, LA. First, you take a trivial chat that should be so apparently obvious only a retard would miss it, then you try to make out of it something substantial so you might pretend as if you are being clever. I certainly want you to be clever, but I gotta call cheese for cheese. I’m sorry.
Now what? How do I respond to that? What if you are her or she is you or you are neither or whatever? What about it? At this point, should I “accept that someone like you would be hot or strong” if I haven’t a clue which picture is you? Pay attention. Switch perspectives.
I think you need to go sit in the corner, LA, and read some Chung-lu-wang.
Pin the tale on the donkey should be played blindfolded. If I have no problem seeing the ass, is it my fault that I pin it so easily?
wunnerful. Just wunnerful. OK, both of you to your corners. Go PM and call each other names, but can we please address the topic instead of each other?
I think so too. Well put. As a child I was being punished for one thing or another everytime I turned around. For a lack of positive interaction when I wasn’t being punished, I purposely sought the attention that might be afforded with punishment. A patterned happened where I became accustomed to seeking “negative attention” from peers, but more so adults obviously, and so would do things to be punished.
This speculation was offered by several of my psychologists when I was young and it is indeed a common prognosis in psychology. However, I do recall that at the actual time, that is, real-time, the behavior was not retrospective…which is to say that during these events I never noticed, as a boy, any sense of negativity. I couldn’t concieve of such a prognosis at the time and therefore it had no meaning to me; I wasn’t “seeking negative attention” but rather recieving negative attention as a result of attempting to get positive attention. See? The psychologists do not speculate from the first-person the emotional events they predict as a prognosis. The child’s negotiation always involves according to its capacity a logic which is rehearsed and deliberate-- he is intentional and aware. He is not the victim of some elaborate psychological disorder pervading him from underneath…and if he is, it is as real as the narrative attempting to explain the disorder by psychologists, and nothing more.
Never in my right mind would I, as a child, purposely engage in activities which resulted in punishment without a calculated exchange of incentives and benefits. I didn’t just take an ass-wupping to get a word or two outta my Dad, I took it because what I did was worth it.
So it makes no sense to me to say that before a time when I could even interpret the theory itself I was willingly acting it out. I think that what adults believe is a disorder is often times no more than a contingent result of a choice of action that just happens to become a pattern. I tend to think in gestalt terms regarding human behavior and I am a strong advocate of Sartrean intentionality as far as it is concerned with emotional states and “moods” or behavioral habits.
A large percent of psychology is an attempt to examine a multifaceted first-person perspective of intentional thinking as if it were static and nondynamic.
