Persistance

When the persistent need to resist...

Persistence is an excellent thing. Many of the most famous and well recognised people were persistent. Helen Keller, Alexander the Great, Martin Luther King Jr, Winston Churchill just to name a few. However many things that are excellent also have a bad side. 

Ice cream is excellent, but if consumed in too large a quantity over long periods of time is not good for you. As a lover of ice-cream this saddens me beyond belief. Why can't ice-cream be healthy and lettuce be full of calories? Seriously.

Exercise is excellent. It keeps you fit and healthy and gives you those lovely little things called endorphins. But let's be honest, there is rarely a day when we think, 'Yippee today's squat day!' 

The internet is excellent. It has helped me with assignments, to meet people on the other side of the world and it has enabled me to watch cat videos and I love myself a cat video, or ten. However, like all excellent things the internet can be really bad. It enables all the miserable, bad people to voice their 'opinions' about how much they hate everything, seriously everything. These people can't let an article about whipped cream pass them by without commenting about how stupid it is. The internet is also really fantastic at distracting people from the real world. Sometimes I wonder if I'd be the professional procrastinator that I am without the world wide web. Most likely yes, but let's just pretend its all the internet's fault.

As you can see, the excellent can also be not so excellent. Persistence is one of those excellent things that is great in small to medium doses but it can also go too far. 

I recently experienced some serious persistence in action. The persistent person was someone whom I'd known vaguely for a around five years but had been

better acquainted them in the last year. They're a male, a fairly good person, nice and seemed interested in me. But I think that had more to do with the fact that I was a single female and he was looking for someone to date. I however was not. I was not attracted to him in the physical sense or the emotional sense. There was no sparks flying on my end. I wasn't going to date someone I didn't feel it with because guess what? That's a perfectly acceptable reason. You don't have to date someone just because they want to date you. You should never go out with someone just because you like the attention they give you. 

While I didn't want to get jiggy with him he was a cool guy, funny and so I kept talking to him because (this may come as a shock to you, brace yourself) I wanted to be his friend. Wow, how amazing that a girl should ever want to be just friends with a boy that likes her. How unkind of her. Also I felt partially sorry for him. He annoyed me a lot of the time but some of the time he was really great to talk to. I do this with female friends so why is it not okay when its a member of the male species?


I made it clear to him early on that I was neither looking to date him or anyone, and that wasn't going to change. This didn't seem to faze him though. He was surprisingly resilient to my rejections. It didn't deter him at all. He'd ask me out to the movies, to his football games, to his house at least once a week, usually more. It was frustrating. I didn't want to hurt him but I didn't want to give him the wrong idea. So I continued to tell him no, that I was busy or that I really just wasn't in to him. But the advances kept coming. Again and again and again. This happened over the course of a year and a half. Eventually I'd get so fed up I'd ignore him for months and then give in again.

Recently after not talking to him for around 3 months he started messaging me on Facebook for the thousandth time and so I thought, okay why not? I'd forgotten partially just how annoying he could be and how badly he was looking for a girlfriend. It was all cool for a weeks. Just a few invites to football matches (I don't even like football) and getting asked maybe three or four times if I was single. This for him was subtle, downplaying just how much he wanted to take me out. Then it started to turn up a notch. The asking out got more intense. Persistent Paul he was (his name isn't actually Paul). Then one night he asked me over to his house to watch a movie and he kept asking and asking and asking. I said no. No. No. No. I told him I didn't think of him that way. I told him I couldn't I was busy. I told him I just plain and simple didn't want to. But he wasn't listening. He kept going. And going and going and going. I got so fed up that I told him I had an almost boyfriend and that guy would not appreciate me hanging at some other dudes house. Finally he stopped. I'd thought about telling him this many times. Lying about having a boyfriend because I knew that would shut him up. I don't know how but deep in my gut I knew it would see him retreating off into the shadows.  

Funnily enough though, when I told people I'd done this, I was the bad guy (or rather girl). I was a liar. I was being unfair and harsh. I should have just been straight with him. They seemed to forget the fact that I had been. I'd been straight with him for a year and a half. Over and over and over. He didn't care. In the end he respected some guy he didn't known (that didn't even exist) more than my answer, no. But it was me who was in the wrong. 

Why is this so? 

I have some theories. Firstly I think it comes down to girls being told from infancy that if a guy loves you he will chase you. This is, mostly, true. But chasing is not okay if you're chasing someone who's running away from you. There comes a point in time when the chasing is no longer chasing and is just plain annoying. If the girl (or boy) continues to say no, continues to put you off either they really aren't into you (like in my case) or they're playing far to hard to get and you need to let that lady go. Pestering someone repeatedly is not romantic, so please girls and boys do not buy into this game. 

My second theory is that we're often made to feel that us girls (unless you're supermodel good looking) should fall into the arms of whoever holds even the slightest affection for us. Especially if they're a 'really nice guy'. Ladies and gentlemen let me tell you something, if a boy is so 'nice' he will be okay with being your friend, with you not being interested. Yes it may hurt them, of course. They do after all have feelings. However if they make you feel guilty, tell you they've been 'friendzoned' like your friendship is a consolation prize or put you down then they aren't very 'nice'. Like I said to this guy, we're allowed to say no aren't we? We don't have to accept any guy who wants to hold our hand. We're allowed to not find someone attractive and not want to go out with them. Provided you're polite about it (unless they don't seem to know how to accept no as an answer). You are allowed to surpass a prince if he's not charming in your eyes. 

Despite the whole situation with Persistent Paul (his anonymity I will endeavour to protect) it has taught me several important lessons. Never will I judge a girl who doesn't want to date a guy even though he's really into her. I now understand how annoying  that is and to a better extent, we are allowed to not like people romantically. It does not make us a bad or shallow person. I now realize that persistence is great but there comes a point in time when it needs to be turned down a notch (or seven in PP's case). Lastly it has taught me that never will I ever pursue someone so intensely, persistently and constantly as PP. May his courage and determination be warn down over time so that one day he will find a lucky lady that appreciates him but isn't pestered by him. 

Xoxo Fangirl Out