I just found out about Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD). Linked to ADHD, severe emotional pain felt as a result of rejection or perceived rejection.
Rejection sensitivity is defined as dysphoria induced by perceived or real rejection, and/or criticism. People who experience rejection sensitivity readily detect rejection, and therefore perceive rejection/criticism more frequently than others. The ensuing dysphoric episode often involves intense feelings of extreme misery, anxiety, and pain.
There are people who don’t feel this? People who presumably just go on with their lives?
I’m still processing this. However, already I can see how this has contributed to my loneliness. I have withdrawn and isolated myself to avoid what seems like nothing but an endless and pointless cycle of rejection. I know I’m alone in part because I don’t try, and this is why I don’t try.
It’s telling that all of the people speaking publicly about this are pretty women, women who inevitably find love because it finds them no matter what, and therefore have enough emotional contentment to be able to talk about it. How many people are suffering because love doesn’t find them, and they are therefore locked in a box of shame that doesn’t even let them talk about it?
I’ve always wondered how other people could take someone back after being dumped by them. The damage caused is permanent. You’ll always remember that they did that to you.
I have rejection fantasies. (And I don’t use that word to suggest that I enjoy them.) I dwell on actual rejections I have experienced. Especially ghostings. I imagine female friends rejecting me. I often shape the fantasies to emphasize my innocence, to accentuate the feeling of being wronged by the rejection. I construct scenarios in my head about online women I don’t even know. My head is filled with this shit all the time.
I feel “rejected” by women who haven’t really even rejected me. They’re already in a relationship with someone else. They’re clearly interested in the interesting guy and not me. All the societal rules that prohibit men from even expressing an interest in women is effectively a form of rejection. I’m alone, which means that womankind as a whole has collectively rejected me, and every individual woman is in on it.
It hurts just thinking about the nature of sexual selectivity.
I have anxiety about women having told all my other female friends in the same circle about my defects. (And not without good reason. I have gotten close to some women and told them my darkest secrets, who then gossiped about my confidences.)