You totally nailed this issue here. One of the reasons I hate being rejected with a passion is because A) I’ve always believed that it was a symptom for being an unworthy piece of trash; B) If any woman I dared to ask out was too afraid to say ‘no’ directly but came up with some lame excuse or even worse, fake-agreed before cancelling abruptly, it’s because they think I’m no different from other men in their lives who reacted with violence or abuse. That there’s something so horribly WRONG with me that they decided I should be crushed in that manner.

My coping mechanism to get over anyone is to tell myself that they’re laughing at me with their women friends for thinking I had a chance and imagining some all powerful, charming and professionally successful man who represents everything I failed to be sweeping them off their feet.

My disgust at myself for not being to attract nice women in any way, coupled with the fear of being categorized in the same basket of gropers, up skirters and cat callers, has taken a darker turn as time passes. Whenever I read in the news stories of violent domestic abusers and the women who stood by them until they got hurt or murdered, I started asking myself, ‘What do these people have that I don’t? Why did they WIN while I was NOTHING?’

It has been explained to me that abusers are deviously manipulative sociopaths and target women who are desperate not to be alone. I deplore domestic abusers with a passion but at the same time, have indulged in the unhealthy perception that they are somehow ‘better’ than me because they at least got someone while I’ve been dismissed out of hand on a whim.