Just say no

I just wish people could learn how to say “no” instead of coming up with some kind of answer that’s supposed to let down the other person easy, to not hurt their feelings. I’m tired of answers that sound like “yes (or maybe) though not right now,” but which are, in reality, “nope, it’s never going to happen.”

I realize this probably sounds like I’m talking about a specific person and situation without really saying who and what it is. But no, I’m not referring to one specific thing. This kind of happens a lot. It might be asking someone on a date (not that I’ve done that lately) and they reply with some plausible reason they can’t – it’s not a “no” and, since I (foolishly) want to believe people and take them at their word, it sounds more like a “yes, I’d like to but can’t just now.” Or it might be asking someone to model for me, and they say they’re interested but can’t find the time just now. Or perhaps trying to get a group of people together for some event which they’ve all expressed an interest in doing; yet when you actually invite them, almost no one can ever make it.

In some cases, it’s probably not that they don’t want to do whatever you’re asking, so when they say they’re interested, they do sort of mean it. Yeah, sure, they’re interested, but they’re simply not interested enough to actually bother to make the time to do it. Of course, I’m convinced that in many other cases people just don’t know how to say “no” or they think they’re somehow doing you a favor by not coming right out and saying it. I’ve probably ranted about this before, but... I would prefer that someone say “no” clearly, unambiguously.

You asked me if I’d like to do this thing. Well, thank you for the invitation, but no. I have nothing against you personally, or maybe I do, but either way I’m not going to do this thing you’ve mentioned. Best of luck, though.

See? How hard is that? Might I feel slightly hurt by that? Yeah, possibly. But if I ask you about doing something, and you keep making up excuses that make me believe you want to say yes, I’m gonna keep asking for a while, maybe a few days or weeks or months. And then when I finally get it – that you’re actually saying “no” and have been all along – I’ll probably feel whatever that initial amount of hurt would’ve been, multiplied by the length of time we’ve been engaged in this little dance of denial, or multiplied by the number of times you’ve said “no” while pretending to say “yes”. So, you’ve not spared my feelings; you’ve actually hurt me more at the end of it all, in addition to the small disappointments I felt all along when you’ve said, “I want to, but I can’t right now.”

Maybe most people in the world don’t have this problem. With them, you can make up an excuse without feeling like you’re the sort of person who says “no” – as if that somehow a horrible thing to be. Maybe most other people in the world get it. They probably have enough human social interaction to have learned the myriad ways in which we lie to each other on a daily basis. They’ve learned the lingo, the code. But I haven’t. For some reason I seem to think that people are genuine; even if they’re stupid and petty, when they speak they mean what they say, they tell the truth. It’s probably because that is largely the way I interact with other humans – I tell the truth.

I’m sure this is why I, as a writer, rarely if ever think about subtext. I don’t come up with scenes in which people are consciously lying or trying to manipulate each other to get something.

Hey, here’s a thought. Perhaps I am actually some alien placed here to study you humans, or maybe I was accidently forgotten and left behind. But I developed amnesia and grew up thinking I was a human. Maybe that’s why I just don’t fit in here.

Come back aliens! Take me home! It’s just not working out here!