Why reaction to rejection in romance is often extreme? Experts weigh in

Not everyone is cuddled up in a cosy cabana today. To those who find themselves single on Valentine’s Day, experts say, its not the end of the world

In the last seven years, Delhi resident Shaheen Malik has helped over 300 women and has connected around 150 of them with Meer Foundation for aid. The Mumbai-based non-profit run by actor Shah Rukh Khan aims to empower and provide financial aid to the survivors of acid attack. Malik, an acid attack survivor herself, says that these are largely gender-based crimes, with 90 per cent of those targeting women, and the perpetrators largely fall within two categories. Husbands who attack their wives over arguments form one. The other is love rejection, i.e. men who assault women who have refused their advances.

“A well known case from Delhi is of [a woman identified only as] Meenakshi, who didn’t reciprocate a man’s feelings. So, he attacked her with acid, disfiguring her face. She was treated and rehabilitated by Meer Foundation,” says Malik, 35. While the judiciary and implementation of laws would be one aspect to preventing acid attacks, the other, and perhaps more important step would be learning to deal with rejection.

Dr Alpesh Panchal, a Mumbai-based psychiatrist and de-addiction specialist, says while a student in medical college, his class and teachers would be on high alert in the week leading up to and after Valentine’s Day, because cases of suicide attempts would be higher.

Paromita Vohra and Dr Alpesh Panchal

Whether it’s attacking someone else or self-harming, why are our reactions to rejection in romance extreme?

Filmmaker, writer, and founder of Agents of Ishq, Paromita Vohra, puts it down to how our conversations about love don’t expand to discuss relationships, and, how even within the context of relationships there is a hierarchy.

“We are not taught that failed love is not the end of the world. Even the idea of the soulmate, which was a platonic idea, has got a romantic colour. India has had a tradition of birha geet or barah maasi—songs of love and longing, where we spoke of waiting for someone like a parched earth waits for the rain. But, that yearning and longing was not linked to rejection,” says Vohra. Though marriage, especially arranged, is a pervasive part of our culture, we haven’t developed a language for talking about relationships. “To say that love is what it is, whenever it is, as many times as it is, challenges the idea of marriage,” she adds. 

An acid attack survivor joins a protest in Delhi for crimes against women. While the judiciary and implementation of laws would be one aspect to preventing acid attacks, says activist Shaheen Malik (top right), the other, and perhaps more important step would be learning to deal with rejection. Pic/Getty Images

And so, the understanding is that love is proven only when it ends in marriage, and every other relationship is not love or not serious.

There is no denying that rejection hurts. Dr Guy Winch, psychologist and author of Emotional First Aid: Practical Strategies for Treating Failure, Rejection, Guilt, and Other Everyday Psychological Injuries, writes, “When scientists placed people in functional MRI machines and asked them to recall a recent rejection, they discovered something amazing. The same areas of our brain become activated when we experience rejection as when we experience physical pain. That’s why even small rejections hurt more than we think they should, because they elicit literal [albeit, emotional] pain.”

And, rejection in love hurts a lot more, often disproportionately. “During a workshop we had conducted, people admitted that if they were rejected for a job, they’d move on and find another. But to move on when you have been rejected in love is more difficult,” says Vohra, adding that the mating ritual requires different roles from men and women and so, our response to rejection is conditioned by this.

Pune resident Gayatri Sarang with partner Pascal Mazella

“For men, the role is to pick the woman. Masculinity is about succeeding with women and women get to be chosen. When that doesn’t happen, identity falls into question. For women, their femininity comes into question. So, the idea becomes ‘pick me, or I will persist’. We are not made to think ‘it didn’t work out, we will cry and move on’.”

But, how does one move on in a culture that worships the idea of one true love for the entire life?

While Dr Panchal doesn’t want to put a number to it, he says a large number of the patients he sees for de-addiction are those for whom the trigger was a failed romantic relationship. Popular culture, the Devdas look for instance, has romanticised the notion of a man or a woman pining for a lost love.

Dr Zirak Marker

“When substance abuse is in the picture, you have to manage that before you can treat the initial trigger. Often the substance was picked up when the initial love failure happened. 

It wouldn’t have been an addiction then, but over the years it became the go-to coping mechanism. How one deals with failure is multi-factoral. Men are told that they can’t fail. They have to succeed and everything will go right for them. So, if you are not taught to deal with failure early in life, it makes you more vulnerable when handling rejection in your love life.”

Can we be taught, then, how to fail?

Yes. And, it needs to be done urgently, argues Malik, saying that the pervading thought of “meri nahin, toh kisi aur ki nahin” also needs to be attacked. Last week, a 30-year-old from Mumbai set fire to his girlfriend in Jogeshwari after her family refused to let the two marry. The woman held on to  her attacker, and he caught fire too. Both of them succumbed to the burn injuries.  

Dr Zirak Marker, child & adolescent psychiatrist and adviser, Mpower the Centre, says, notions of relationships are often absorbed in childhood and one-sided relationships, in which there is no connect between the two parents, or one parent is switched off, leads to the image that “relationships are meant to be this way”. So, for a child to have a healthy relationship, the parents must address what a healthy relationship looks like.

Dr Marker, who along with his team has built a curriculum around mental health which 18 schools across India have adopted says that “relationships, love and rejection” is one module. “Inability to deal with rejection comes with snow plowing parenting, where the parents clear all obstacles in front of the child. Instead, if a child doesn’t study, or is caught plagiarising or bullying, let them live with the consequences,” he says. “For instance, if your child wakes up at 11 pm, saying they have an assignment to submit the next morning, which they forgot to tell you about, instead of sitting up and completing it till 1 am, tell your child that it’s too late and that they should either stay up themselves and complete it or get a zero for the assignment. Face the consequences with the child. Tell them that they are not alone and that you are here to support them, and that they need to realise their mistake.”

Teaching self-worth, which is not tied to a romantic relationship is also important. “We have a halo around the romantic relationship. Seen as a ‘loser’ if you are not in one, it’s often seen as better to remain in a bad or toxic relationship,” Dr Marker adds.

Speaking of a 24-year-old patient who consulted him after seven failed relationships, he says, she would be traumatised after each break-up, unable to work and went through several crying spells, along with suicidal ideation. “And, within two months, she’d be dating someone else. She had lost her identity and during the sessions we realised that she came from a broken home, and the romantic relationships were a way for her to hold on to a male figure in her life.”

A healthy coping mechanism for rejection, says Dr Panchal, would be to turn to humour—make fun of the things that happened and move on—or sublimation. “Convert the pain into art such as painting or music. As counsellors, our work is to identify immature defence mechanisms such as denial, dependence, repression and lead the patient to a more mature defence mechanism. After all, problem sabko hone waala hai. The only differentiating factor is how you deal with it,” he adds.

To reduce the pain around rejection, says Vohra, we also need to dismantle the language and power structures that exist in the romantic world today. In the reject-or-be-rejected race, dating is fraught with anxiety. “If where a relationship goes determines its hierarchy, one that doesn’t end in marriage leaves you feeling worthless. We need to see different forms of love, and relationships as the norm, not aberrations,” she adds.

It might be a simplistic analogy. But, when we miss a bus, we don’t break down. Because we know that the next bus will come. Yet, in love, we are taught scarcity. That there’s one love, one important relationship that we will have it our entire lives.

Reality is quite different.

A Facebook post asking if anyone had found love after a failed relationship or love, threw up the wonderful comment: “Isn’t that everybody”.

Pune resident and communications professional Gayatri Sarang cannot count the number of times she has been in love or thought that she’s in love. But, she admits, the pressure to find someone comes early in life. “As soon as you hit puberty. We are also taught that we are entitled to love. Falling in love is our destiny and the one who you fall in love with is your soulmate. There’s is pressure around rejection and also failure of a relationship. But, your relationship with your family, friends, animals or work doesn’t count. It’s the romantic relationship that defines your success.”

Over the years, she says, failed relationships, have only taught her to be more comfortable with herself in a way that she can add value to them. “We aim to control the way someone is with us, but we have no control over other people in fact. The idea is to attract the right people to you, the ones who are right for you to be with,” she says, adding that when she started dating 32-year-old Pascal Mazella last year, they attended a therapy session together to set relationship goals. “We felt that often couples do this after things start going wrong, but this would help us see if we are on the same page and take stock of where we are. The therapist even gave us a book recommendation, which we read together.”

Is there a good reason to be in a romantic relationship?

Dr Marker says, “Look for partnership. It’s not just about sexual compatibility. It should be someone who helps you be a better version of yourself. And you bring out the best in them. You feel accepted for who you are. You feel validated and respected. There is emotional, physical and financial security and intimacy.”

And, if you can’t find this relationship in a romantic partner, all is not over. “You can find the same relationship with friendship, parents and siblings.”

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