Rejection stings. You’ve opened up to someone and shared your feelings for them, only to have the door to a potential relationship slammed in your face. It can seem like an extra blow on top of a world that’s already pretty tough. That’s especially true if your potential love interest didn’t exactly let you down gently.
You’re suddenly overwhelmed with self-doubt: what went wrong? And why? The whole thing is just completely unfair. What’s worse is that you can’t exactly ask the person who rejected you for their reasoning.
That would just hurt even more. Some small part of you keeps replaying the moment over and over. If only it were easy to find someone that wants you as much as you want them. And if you’ve ever rejected someone yourself, maybe it feels a little bit like the cruel hand of karma.
Indulging in some good old-fashioned wallowing can help. Another thing that might help is hearing about other peoples’ experiences with rejection. It shows you that as tough as this experience is, you are far from alone.
Eden Dranger is a comedian and writer. She is active on Twitter and recently asked other users to share their harshest rejection stories. Apparently there are a lot of bruised souls out there: Dranger’s question got 4,173 retweets and 67.6K likes.
Here are 10 of the best stories that range from savage to weird, and sad to “wow, that person dodged a bullet.” Relationships are messy and boy have these people been there.