Babe, your rejection sensitivity is showing again

When safety and danger live in the same person

Women have been swallowing micro rejections their entire lives. We just learned how to stomach it.

The first time I felt rejected, I was five. A girl in my class wanted to play families with another girl and not me.

I don’t remember her name. I remember the feeling.

The most recent was Tuesday. My partner’s tone was slightly off, and I had already decided, before he’d finished the sentence, that he would never want a family with me either.

One was a playground game. One was my entire future. My brain didn't distinguish between the two.

That’s RSD.

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Women have been socialised to centre other people’s feelings, so when rejection lands, it confirms a narrative we’ve already been building for years.

We learn to manage how we’re perceived rather than how we feel.

Every performance that wasn’t quite enough. Every bit of reassurance that didn’t reassure enough. Every moment you made yourself smaller, and it still wasn’t small enough.

So the wave of dread that comes after perceived rejection is often confusing for us, too.

The chest drop when a message reads differently than expected. The way a mildly critical email can derail an entire day. The physical nausea of feeling like the most hated in the room.

We are fed the message from childhood that being liked is the same as being safe.

And sometimes it’s easier to pretend like we don’t care at all. If you never show vulnerability, no one can reject it.

They can’t reject you.

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I’m not choosing to be sensitive. I’d really rather live without it.

Unfortunately, my nervous system does not know the difference between a slight change in someone’s tone and being held at gunpoint.

It doesn’t know that someone not being as excited over something as I am isn’t them calling me stupid and a waste of space.

It doesn’t know that someone being quieter than usual might not actually have anything to do with me.

But what it does know is that being around the people we love most is the only thing keeping us afloat.

And if that feels like it might disappear…we’ve already drowned.

Knowing that it might not be true doesn’t stop the persistent crushing feeling telling us that it is.

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Or at least, I know that’s the case for me.

And I know my partner will be reading this, replaying every situation over in his head. Sorry about Tuesday, by the way.

The constant "are you sure you're not annoyed at me?"

The way I can be completely fine and then suddenly not.

The way I go quiet, or over-explain, or apologise for something he didn't even register as an issue.

How he often feels like he can’t do anything right.

When really, it isn’t on him at all. In fact, the reason the RSD is greater with him is because he means more to me than anyone.

The cost of loving someone is to fear losing them.

And loving them so intensely means their mood becomes a verdict in a courtroom that sees abandonment before reasoning.

My body finds safety in his presence, and any suggestion that his presence might waver feels more devastating than rejection.

It’s like the very arms that kept you safe for so long forgot how it feels to hold you.

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When you’re in the midst of RSD, most people say to reassure. But I’m not.

Because reassurance is only as effective until the next trigger. If reassurance is the only tool, it’s not stopping anything; it’s adding extra padding to the cycle.

And, over time, it wears off. Every time he reassured me, I just needed the next one sooner.

What we really need is to feel safe enough that the spiral has somewhere to land. Externalising the RSD as something separate and not something inherently wrong within you.

Simple changes of words can separate the RSD from the person, and when that happens, it’s easier to look at it together.

“It’s doing that thing again” is a lot less accusatory than “You’re doing that thing again”.

“Is it making you feel unloved?” is a lot more connected than “Are you making yourself feel unloved?”

Working through it together instead of showering reassurance is the difference between throwing a lifejacket from the shore and getting in the water with them.

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Even knowing all of this, even being able to name it and write about it, doesn't mean I’m immune to it. I still decided last Tuesday that it was over.

I still felt like the left-out five-year-old girl.

Having awareness of it doesn’t switch it off, but it gives me the words for it while it’s happening. Because it’s not something we just happen to pick up as neurodivergent women.

RSD in women is a learned response to a world that trained us to be palatable.

Women have been swallowing micro rejections their entire lives. Sometimes, reassurance is training us to choke on it.

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So, to you reading this, you're not too much.

You learnt very early that love was something that was earned, and something that could be lost.

To the partner, you don't have to fix it. You just have to stay while it passes.

And whilst you're learning how to do so,

I’ll be here.

- Ella <3

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