On the way to work the other morning, I tuned into a John Mayer song and I actually listened to the lyrics. In his song "Say," he sings "You better know that in the end it's better to say too much than to never say what you need to say again." He also sings that you'd be better off instead saying what you need to say "even if your hands are shaking and your faith is broken. Even as your eyes are closing, do it with a heart wide open, a wide heart."
Well, John, easier said than done.
A good friend and I were recently catching up when the conversation turned to how we communicate with guys we date. With every phone call, conversation and text message we refuse to utter any word that could be interpreted as needy or desperate.
"God forbid you put yourself out there," my moms says, who thinks it is ridiculous that I never say anything that puts me in what she calls a vulnerable position.
As much as I know every guy is different, in both mine and my friend's experience, we had either put ourselves out there and the guy changed his mind or we didn't put ourselves out there and the chase ensued.
Maybe our timing has been off or the guy just wasn't right for us in the past, but the hard part is when you find a guy you are truly interested in and you do put your feelings out there and you're rejected. Of course you don't want to do the same thing after that. There have been times when a guy spilled his feelings to me, but reciprocity still sent him away. Or I just wasn't interested in him enough to reciprocate.
How can you say to yourself "Well at least I told him how I felt," when you are ultimately rejected? The only thing I'm thinking after that is "Damn, I shouldn't have said all of those things to him."
Obviously, putting your feelings out there and basically having them rejected hurts, but is it more difficult to cope with the loss of power? When you say "I really like you," or something else along those lines, the guess work for the guy is over. He no longer needs to "chase" you because he knows you're more than interested in him.
But I have also learned in the past, not being open about how I feel with a guy hasn't exactly turned out great either.
So which is worse? Regretting saying how you feel? Or regretting not saying how you feel?
Depending on they type of person you are and how open you are about your feelings, it might be hard to see things down the road when you're in the moment deciding to speak up or hold it in. If you think about it, if you just go with it and say how you feel and ultimately get rejected, at least you know how the situation ended. And it probably wouldn't have mattered if you said it or not, that person's feelings towards you wouldn't have changed.
But not saying how you feel could leave you wondering how things would have been if you had said what you were thinking and feeling. What if he was waiting for you to spill your feelings first? What if he wasn't sure how you felt about him? At least for me, that type of regret is much harder to get over.
xoxo Nickie
