Rejection causes more psychic damage when we think it reveals something fundamental about ourselves. In response, men tend to react more aggressively, while women seek social support (and lower their standards).
The resulting insecurity and threat to our sense of self can have a longer shelf life than your average romantic rejection, true. But it still doesn’t make it your friend’s fault or responsibility.
Like your Bumble date, they just weren’t feeling it either.
WHY WE CAN’T LET GO OF THE FRIENDS-TO-LOVERS TROPE
There’s no shame in dreaming about your turn to post the social media caption “I married my best friend”.
A Canada study published in 2021 found that two-thirds of couples start out as friends. A 2014 UK survey found that friendship had a significant influence on conjugal bliss: People who married their best friends are twice as happy. Who doesn’t want that?
But being fixated on becoming partners with that one friend who “just gets you” doesn’t happen in a cultural vacuum.
Social historian Stephanie Coontz said true friendship only really became a part of marriage in America during the 1990s, owing to greater gender equality.
Esther Perel of “relational intelligence” vogue said this has gone too far: “We still want all the same things that traditional marriage was about – family life, companionship, economic support and social status. But now (we) also want (our partners) to be a best friend, a trusted confidant and a passionate lover to boot.
“What we have created in a romantic ambition is one person to give us what once an entire village used to provide.”