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People Are Sharing The Worst Ways They’ve Been Rejected & It’s Truly Brutal

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Dating is stressful enough, even without the constant lingering fear of rejection.

Getting dumped, or having your feelings unreciprocated sucks. Rejection affects basically everyone from all walks of life and different age brackets. Starting from when you’re in primary school and you ask out your crush and they laugh in your face, to awkward Tinder dates in your 20s that abruptly end without explanation. And rejection can still happen even when you’re older and you think you’re in a loving, committed relationship — but your partner clearly does not.

Getting dumped or left humiliated in a romantic setting can’t easily be shrugged off, and particularly savage instances of rejection can have long-term effects on someone’s confidence. On Reddit page r/AskReddit a question was put the thread, ‘What is the worst possible way to be rejected?’, and the answers are going to make your blood boil. Some people are bloody brutal. We’ve selected some of the worst ones.

Prepare to get real mad.

Here are some of the worst ways people have been rejected:

(Some posts have been edited for clarity.)


1. The rejected love poem.

“My first crush in middle school, I wrote her a poem and left it on her desk. At recess the teacher asked me to stay behind and rejected me for her. Apparently the girl had a boyfriend in another class. Having the teacher do it for her felt weird to me. I wish the story ended there but she [the girl] kept the poem on her and from time to time she would pull it out and show me that she still had it and remind me that I was still rejected.”

@jmarsh642

2. The guy who left someone on his hook for two years.

“Thought I was dating a guy for two years. He would call me his girl to his friends and we would hang out every day. ‘Hang out’ being the key word here. I thought nothing of it. We would be intimate, make plans, eat together, sleep together, go shopping together, and exchange gifts.

“On Valentine’s Day he goes to Miami with another girl, I thought OK weird but I’m not going to be jealous. He’d make it up to me. Turns out he didn’t make it up to me. He was acting weird and I looked at his phone and he got rejected through text by the girl he took to Miami, when he asked her to date him and think about the future and start a family. When I asked him why he lied about it, he told me I was never his girlfriend and that I misunderstood our friendship and he was rejecting my advances for something more committed. So yeah my worst ‘rejection’ up to date.”

@fuckboyclown

3. The girl who should have just said ‘no’.

“Asked a girl for her phone number one night at the bar, she smiled and happily gave it to me. Waited a few days and called it, turns out it was for a funeral home. I died a little inside that day.”

@i_iz_potato

4. The bold but misguided declaration of love.

“I was 12. All my classmates pushed me to confess to my crush, who was standing on the stairs. Everyone was staring at me as I, in my prepubescent anxiety, managed to blurt out ‘I love you’ while holding my arms up. She put on the deepest expression of disgust I’ve ever seen, and I ran away. Fun times.”

@thrashingkaiju

5. The girl who should have stayed with her ex.

“I went to a bar with a girl who I had met at work once. We had really hit it off from day one and so we had decided to go get drinks, but the whole day she was just… off. Like, she wasn’t rude or anything, she was just acting weird. When we got to the bar, we basically sat in awkward silence until — who would have guessed it — her ex shows up.

“He comes over to the table, introduces himself to me and then starts talking to the girl and she immediately stops acting weird. And then he left. And then she started acting weird again. Eventually, she excuses herself to go to the bathroom. She was gone for a while, so I turn around in my seat and look toward the bathroom and there she is, sitting in her ex’s lap, making out with him.”

@unusualinsomniac

6. The important lesson to never trust the smiley face emoji.

“I was on my way to work and got broken up through text with a smiley face emoji. It was out of the blue and a month ago we were talking about moving in together in another state.”

@anxietywithflair

7. The girl who’s probably going to Hell.

“One time I had a date with a girl I knew through mutual friends on a Friday night. About an hour before the date, she texts me that her dad had a massive heart attack and she needs to go to the hospital. Later that night, she posted pictures on Instagram of her out with some friends. She gave her dad a fake heart attack to get out of going on a date with me. Oof.”

@eltoberino

8. The boy who was religious — but not that religious.

“My first boyfriend in high school told me I wasn’t religious enough to date him and broke up with me. He did this after church before we left the building. Pulled me aside in a conference room, like we were having an evaluation meeting. A few months later, he was sent home from a school trip for having sex in the bathroom. My first thought: I guess she was ‘religious enough’ for him.”

@crafty-arachnid6824

9. The guy who broke up via fake accidental text.

“To set the scene, I’m going to use these [different] names: Bob was dating Carol and Bob’s best friend was Ted. So what Bob did was he sent Carol this text message: ‘Hey Ted, I think I’m going to break up with Carol tonight, but I’m just not sure how to do it.’ Cold-blooded.”

@disinterestedturtle

10. The girl who moved on without actually bothering to breakup.

“Being led on or strung along when the other person is clearly over it. I am currently going through it. We were seeing each other for about three months and then someone new entered her life. They began hanging out a ton, she was answering me less and less. I asked her about it, and she straight-up said ‘it’s fine if it’s over, but I don’t want to just throw us away over me being paranoid. So just be straight with me.’ Up until then she had been honest (or I think she was) so I believed her when she said she was just busy with the end of the school year, and he was just a friend.

“Flash forward two weeks, we have spend max two hours in that same time [together]. Hurts SO much worse this way. Like, I wasn’t even important enough to dump. I was just gutted and left to bleed out on the side.”

@gpotato

11. The girl who wasn’t just rejected by a boy but also by a bunch of mean girls.

“I was in middle school and this group of girls convinced me to ask out a guy I liked because they said he liked me back. They helped me get all dressed up and look nice. Then at lunchtime, they brought me to him and they stood around and watched me. Before I could even say anything, the guy completely rejected me in front of everyone. And everyone started laughing at me. One of the girls said out loud, ‘Ewww why would he ever like you, no one does.’ Middle school was not a pleasant time for me.”

@projectglue

12. The awkward moment when three truly is a crowd.

“I went on a first date with a girl. We had a nice dinner and really seemed to be hitting it off. We decided to visit a jazz club after dinner. Some guy started flirting with her when she was on her way to the ladies room. It continued when she was on her way back. Dude then popped up nearby and just kept looking at her and winking at her while she was sitting at the table with me.

“She excused herself and went over and started talking to the guy. I was hopeful that it was a ‘What the fuck is your problem, dude?’ conversation. But no. Soon they were laughing and joking and exchanging numbers. When I decided to call it a night, she thanked me for dinner and said she was going to hang out a bit longer.”

@dickyschmidt33

If you’re as hooked as us, read more of Reddit’s worst rejection stories here.