No means no: not just about sex (part 2)

In which I get to the point of my last post.

(Trigger warning for very brief mention of rape in a general sense.)

I’ve thought a lot about why, exactly, everything imploded in my relationship with Bob. One likely influence was my asexuality, which I didn’t know about at the time. This made it hard for me to identify and articulate my boundaries, because I didn’t really understand that my situation was very different than most other people’s, and that people wouldn’t understand it unless I explained. That was my fault, and someday I might work up the courage to apologize to him for it.

But for me, the defining moment of this whole debacle, what caused me to refuse to reconsider, the event that made me stop feeling confused and conflicted and start feeling angry, was Bob’s continual asking. At times, I would even call it begging. Every time we started that argument, I became angry and frustrated, because he wasn’t listening to me. He refused to accept my “no” as a valid decision.

I think that I can safely blame the media for this idea, because I keep seeing it come up over and over again. It’s a tired and annoying Romantic Movie trope. Guy is in love with Girl, but she turns him down for some reason: she has a boyfriend, she’s pressured by her friends, he did one little thing to annoy her, she’s scared of love, etc. But really, she’s secretly in love with him too! And he just has to keep harassing her until she admits it! If he doesn’t fight for her, he doesn’t really deserve her.

You know those cheesy, “inspirational” or “heartwarming” sayings that float around the internet and are used as meaningless Facebook status updates or captions for black-and-white pictures of people holding hands? There’s one that I keep seeing that says, “Sometimes you put walls up not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to break them down,” which I think illustrates what I’m talking about pretty well. Bob actually said something of similar effect to me once. My reaction was, “But I spent a lot of effort putting up those walls! Don’t touch them!”

In case it isn’t clear already, when someone says they don’t want to date you, THEY MEAN THEY DON’T WANT TO DATE YOU. I understand that this is not true of everyone. There are some people who play hard to get and want you to chase them. These are not people you want to date. Anyone who says “no” and expects you to figure out that they mean “yes” is only going to make you miserable. They are not worth your time.

(And lest you think it is a purely female trait, I beg to differ. A female friend of mine told a guy that she was interested in him and was rejected. A few days later, he said that he was testing her and if she had fought for him for a few days, he would have given in. She slapped him in the middle of the school hallway. While I don’t condone violence, I’m a little disappointed that I wasn’t there to witness this.)

I think people rely too much on body language. They say that 70% of communication is non-verbal, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to actually listen to the words. The chance of misinterpreting someone’s body language seems too high to take that chance. In extreme cases, this is the basis for using, “But I thought she wanted it!” to justify rape. And there are people who think that this is acceptable, because hey, she shouldn’t have been sending mixed signals.

I wonder if asexuals have more issues with this than sexuals. Because we’re more likely to separate romance, platonic friendship, and sexual attraction, our body language might be more open to misinterpretation. Someone might mistake platonic friendship for romance, or romance for sexual attraction. Asexuals are probably more likely to turn down relationships even with people they are romantically attracted to, due to fear of pressure to behave sexually.

Anyway, that’s my rant. Has anyone else had a similar experience? Or can you name some romantic comedies that use this? I don’t really watch romantic comedies, so I feel like my examples are rather vague.

Bonus: While writing this, I coincidentally found this link to a very, very old article on the satire website The Onion. So clearly I am not the only one who thinks this is absurd.