Should You Continue Pursuing Someone Who Isn’t Interested?
This has happened to just about everyone, male and female. You meet someone you’re interested in. You make your move by either asking them out or letting them know in no uncertain terms that you’d say yes if they asked. But alas, the object of your affection just doesn’t have that lovin’ feeling towards you. You mope away trying to salvage your bruised ego. Now what? Do you continue pursuing your crush, or do you lick your wounds and move on to more promising opportunities?
You’d think this would be an easy one to answer. If he or she isn’t interested, by all means move on to find someone who is. Unfortunately, the answer isn’t so clear cut to many of you who even as you read this are in the midst of your own pursuits of the unattainable.
Let’s first define our terms:
Pursuit
There’s active pursuit and passive pursuit. Active pursuit is when you keep hitting on the person and trying to ask them out. In extreme cases you become a real pest, or even worse (stalker?). Active pursuers are usually men, but there are some women in this camp too.
Passive pursuit can be two things:
1. You try your best to be around your target and make it look as a coincidence (oh I can’t believe you’re here too…it must be fate). You think that if they get to know you better or just see you all the time they’ll realize their initial mistake and embrace you with open arms. Men and women are both guilty of this.
2. You continue hoping and praying that your crush will suddenly have a moment of clarity and fall madly in love with you. In the interim you pass up giving other potential mates a chance, because your heart belongs to your unattainable. Women are much more likely to fall into this category (although some men do to).
But why would you continue pursuing someone who isn’t interested in reciprocating? Because of those stories. What stories? You know, those stories of the guy who continued pursuing the girl for months (years?) until she finally saw the light and married him. Or the stories of the girl who kept on hanging out with the guy who only saw her as a friend until that one night when he magically refocused his gaze and saw in her the love of his life.
Yes, the stories are true (more or less). I’ve even seen them happen. The only problem is that they happen to only a minuscule percentage of people. In 95% of the cases the crush ends up marrying someone else, and you end up wasting precious months or years in trivial pursuit.
Am I being too pessimistic? People do change, right?
Look, I’m not telling you to give up right away, after the first rebuff. If you really feel that you want to give it that old college try, then give it one more shot. ONE more shot. It’s probably a good idea to give it some time after your first attempt. Then go for it. But if you get the same response, ENOUGH.
Move on to greener pastures. If your crush has a change of heart, they’ll find you and let you know. Until then assume that it’s never gonna happen (which is a safe assumption) and open your heart and mind to find someone who WILL be into you.
WARNING – Whatever you do please don’t become a psycho stalker and continue following the person around and getting in their face wherever they go. Not only will it not earn you their affection, it will earn you the label of weird, creepy, sleezy pest (or stalker) and destroy your chances of dating anyone who’s heard of you. Keep that in mind this weekend :)
>> If you found this post interesting, there’s a lot more super helpful advice in my book, From I to I Do: How to Meet, Date and Marry Your Mr. Right [Available on Amazon]
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