Romantic rejection is a rite of passage, and everyone’s either a victim or a villain. Online dating was designed to dodge it at all costs. But—surprise, surprise—it only gave rejection a software update.
Just ask anyone who’s hit their daily ‘like’ limit on Hinge, only to be met with silence—five swipes, zero matches, and a bruised ego. For instant healing, you aggressively swipe left on everyone who liked you. But don’t quote me on that, I will deny everything.
Nobody approaches anyone at clubs or parties. Gen Z prefers being ghosted on dating apps to the sting of a real-life ‘no’. Some of us share the crests and troughs of our lives with strangers on not less than two to three apps, only to be unmatched mid-trauma dump—because they found someone hotter in the queue. Then there are the masochists who get into situationships. They get rejected by the same person every day. Now, that is commitment.
The new-age dating scene thrives on polite confusion. The painful clarity of “I don’t like you” is replaced with the more gutting “I don’t like you… enough”. There’s always one person in a casual relationship burning the midnight oil for a boyfriend or girlfriend title, only to be slapped with a friend-with-benefits role, or a weekend hookup appointment. It’s rejection in layers, or you can call it death by a thousand paper cuts.
Grieving online
Cultural critics blame the dating apps for the growing fear of rejection among Gen Z and for relationships that feel like an elaborate humiliation ritual. Content creators and dating experts on Instagram post carousels on how to rise above rejection. It’s not you, it’s them—that’s the basic TED talk. Daters are advised to take it as a blessing, a redirection to better things. Because there are now a million ways someone can reject you, the online good Samaritans are also helping people read hidden signs in vague text messages and silent body language.
Psychologists, on the other hand, are diagnosing people with rejection sensitivity dysphoria—a condition where rejections feel catastrophic. In simple therapy speak, the only treatment is ‘healing your inner child’.
The Jesus fanbase is spreading its own propaganda: “So what he doesn’t want you? God loves you.” To fact-check this claim, you must reach out to the press office in heaven.
On the unhinged side—aka the interesting one—the discourse takes a juicier turn. The advice you get there sounds petty, but it works like a charm. Reject them before they reject you. Switch off the blue tick on WhatsApp, so you never know at what point you were ghosted. Always go for people uglier than you, so there’s less risk of disappointment.
“People who are both job hunting and swiping on dating apps are burning the stick of dynamite at both ends,” read one tweet. Someone replied: “I’ve been thinking about and then deciding not to even try to redownload a dating app every few days while I’ve been job hunting because I can only handle so much rejection at once.”
Trust us to not suffer quietly through the pangs of unrequited love. We grieve online—via cryptic captions, sad girl playlists, and 20-minute voicenotes to our besties. Some of us even descend into the digital underworld of subtweets and AITA threads to roast our former flings.
“I gave the ugly guy a chance and he had the gall to block me,” one post read. It’s still healthier than how some people handle rejection.
Also read: Romance has the urgency of breaking news now. Dating apps are editorial fodder
Danger: Rejections ahead
While nobody takes rejection well, newspaper headlines reveal that it turns men into murderers, stalkers, and rapists. A 27-year-old chartered accountant said she blames her “strict landlord” every time she wants to tell a man she can’t bring him home after a lousy first date.
This is not to rob women of their own predatory, pushy streak. Convinced of their fairy-like qualities, some of them can’t digest that a man can reject them. Raanjhanaa’s Kundan looks like a noob chaser compared to them. A Delhi-based man snubbed his one-night stand at least 20 times, and yet she wouldn’t give up hounding him online and offline. She’d crash every party thrown by their mutual friends, just to grill him about why he won’t return her calls. Worried about being bad-mouthed, the man caved and went on one more date with her. She didn’t have fun that day, so she told him to never text her again. Love may be dead, but audacity lives on.
Men also frequently call out women for being brutal in the way they reject them. The memes start with ‘Worst she can say is no’ and end with a punchline that would scar a person for life. In a viral text exchange doing rounds on social media, a guy asks a girl to clarify if he’s her lover, sidepiece, friend, etc. She replies, “Etc.” Who would survive this?
In our defence, women say it’s better to destroy someone in one blow than keep them hanging for months. “I refuse to act like men who give breadcrumbs of affection for months till the other person takes the hint,” said a serial rejecter working in finance. The delivery is savage, but the intention is often mercy.
Rejection has wrecked some people to the point that they’ve taken the involuntary celibacy route. Thanks to desi matrimony, not everyone will die single. Our parents are more than happy to take over the burden—and get rejected on our behalf.
You can’t pay me enough to take that route. I’ve spent enough on therapy to know I’m not everyone’s cup of tea—and that’s fine.
This article is part of a series of columns on modern dating in India—the good, the bad and the cuddly.
Views are personal. The author tweets @ratanpriya4.
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)