Rejection isn’t the same as heartbreak, which entails a past acceptance. A rejection implies that you don’t even warrant a try. From the reject’s perspective, the reciprocity of heartbreak looks pretty appealing.

At parties you imagine the date you didn’t bring, then go home to share your bed with a ghost. Absence becomes the realest thing in your world.

No matter how unpleasant or unequal, a breakup is at least something you share with someone else.

A story that begins with closure can never end.

Narrative is a way of giving not only shape and coherence to chaos, but progress and closure; its absence creates a feeling of endless languishing.

Rejection may be universal, but as plots go, it’s second-rate—all buildup and no closure, an inherent letdown. Stories are usually defined by progress: the development of events toward their conclusions, characters toward their fates, questions toward understanding, themes toward fulfillment. But unlike marriage, murder, and war, rejection offers n... See more

Even with no hope of requital, desire can persist, even intensify, with no guarantee of ending. The lack of happening is the tragedy.

Devotion—putting someone in an exalted position, as Pygmalion places Galatea, on a literal pedestal—feels like empathy, in their shared sense of understanding someone deeply, but is actually the opposite. When wishful thinking becomes confused with reality, the real person vanishes, as does the entire world around that person.

No matter how unpleasant or unequal, a breakup is at least something you share with someone else. Rejection makes only one reject. “Unrequited love does not die,” writes Elle Newmark in The Book of Unholy Mischief , “it’s only beaten down to a secret place where it hides, curled and wounded. For some unfortunates, it turns bitter and mean, and thos... See more