A Woman’s Best Revenge
By Nina Atwood
Melissa Rycroft, the Bachelorette who was dumped on air by Bachelor Jason Mesnick, has achieved a woman’s best revenge: living her life well! The judges on Dancing With the Stars affirmed her as she showed all of America that she is standing strong, refusing to let Jason’s behavior keep her from joy. This is noteworthy because it’s the path less taken post-rejection, and it’s the more difficult path. But it is the path that in the long run puts you back in life, available for a far better love, and thriving. Have you ever been rejected by someone you loved and trusted? If so, this message is for you! I’ll parse it out for you based on the passage of time and the temptations that you encounter.
The first few minutes. Initially, there is shock and disbelief. How could someone who previously declared his love for you, and in Melissa’s case did so on national television, now tell you that you are not right for him? It’s too much to take in, so you resist the truth, pushing back desperately with theories about fear of intimacy, fear of commitment, or whatever theory you can find in the latest self-help book. The truth is that he never achieved the level of love that has deep rootedness – the kind of love that is based on a deep awareness of and appreciation for who you are, combined with the inescapable truth that he can’t imagine his life without you! When a guy reaches that level of love for a woman, he’ll move heaven and earth to be with her.
The next few hours and days. You’re still in shock and denial, but now you are grieving. You re-live the moment of rejection over and over in your mind, re-hashing what happened before and trying to come to terms with your new reality: he’s gone, he doesn’t love you, and he’s not coming back. Gradually, grief and loss turn into anger and rage. How dare he? You feel betrayed, conned, lied to, decieved. Where previously you saw him as your prince, now you see him as the devil himself. You begin to fantasize about revenge – you want him to hurt as badly as you hurt. You talk him down to others, hoping that his new relationship fails. In the pay-back mode, women have done some pretty horrible things to the men who rejected them. But did it make them any happier in the long run?
Temptation: Now you face the proverbial fork in the road. Do you see yourself as a victim, filled with righteous indignation, pain and anger, defaming him with your endless story of betrayal for hours on end with anyone who will sit still long enough to hear it? OR, do you work through your pain and anger within yourself, chalk this one up to experience, try to learn from it, and emerge stronger and more ready for love than ever?
The hard thing about the second choice is that it requires you to re-frame what happened so that he is not the villain in your life drama, but a flawed human being who did the best he could what what he knew and who he is. In Melissa’s case, let’s face it: it was a show based on some degree of reality, but all of it in an unrealistic bubble that makes it almost impossible for two people to get past the fantasy and know what they really have – not until the cameras quit rolling, and that’s when the truth began to emerge for Jason and Melissa: they weren’t meant to be. Once he realized that he didn’t love Melissa, Jason didn’t have any good choices, except maybe to simply end it. In a better outcome, he might have restrained his yearning for Molly until the show was over, then reached out to her in private. Most of the public outrage against Jason comes down to timing: it just didn’t look good that he dumped Melissa and then asked Molly for another chance back-to-back.
To re-frame what happened takes enormous maturity. But here’s the thing: until you can be that mature, you’re probably not ready for a grown-up relationship that can grow deep roots and last for a lifetime. So if you can take this painful experience, work through your raw emotions, then learn from it an essential truth of relationships – that until you really know one another, you don’t know what you have, and that takes time - then you have a shot at a great future with someone new! Because just about the time you forgive him, let go of the resentment, accept what happened as part of your life and that you are nobody’s victim, you find you are re-engaged in your life, living and loving! And that’s far better than any revenge you could dream up for him.
Entry Filed under: Advice for Women,Dating
1 Comment
1. thomas | March 10th, 2009 at 11:57 am
that his touf luck , he’s not ready yet to have ANY woman.