Romantische Ablehnung schadet nicht mehr als platonische Ablehnung. Die meisten Menschen gehen davon aus, dass die Ablehnung durch einen potenziellen Liebespartner weitaus schmerzhafter ist als die Ablehnung durch einen potenziellen Freund. Die emotionale Wirkung ist bemerkenswert ähnlich, unabhängig davon, ob sie romantischer oder platonischer Natur ist.
Does romantic rejection hurt more than platonic rejection? A new study says no
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Does romantic rejection hurt more than platonic rejection? A new study says no
Most people assume that rejection by a potential romantic partner is far more painful than rejection by a prospective friend. However, new research published in the European Journal of Social Psychology suggests that, when rejection is actually experienced, the emotional impact is remarkably similar regardless of whether it comes from a romantic or a platonic source.
Romantic rejection is often seen as uniquely devastating, in part because modern societies place heavy emotional expectations on romantic relationships. However, researchers have long noted that humans are broadly motivated by a fundamental need for belonging. Social rejection tends to hurt across all contexts because it threatens shared psychological needs, such as feeling valued, in control, and meaningful.
What has been less clear is whether rejection by a potential romantic partner is more painful than rejection in a friendship context. Given the intense expectations placed on romantic relationships—which are often expected to fulfill a wide range of emotional and personal needs—it has seemed plausible that being denied such a relationship would be especially distressing.
The researchers found that rejection reliably reduced wellbeing, and acceptance reliably enhanced it, but the type of relationship framing—romantic versus platonic—had no effect on emotional outcomes. The team also tested whether feelings of romantic instrumentality (seeing a partner as someone who would help you achieve more of your goals in life) or self-blame might explain any romantic-versus-platonic difference in pain. Neither emerged as a meaningful driver.
Wood and colleagues put it simply: “It seems the experience of being accepted is so positive and the experience of being rejected is so negative that it does not matter who is doing so.”
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ejsp.70066
I wouldn’t have made that assumption.
Romantic pairing is highly selective. You’ve got room for one and that person has to fill a lot of need. Compatibility is as much of a filter as quality. There’s huge opportunity cost to having one partner instead of another.
Friendship rejection is like „it would cost me nothing to just consider you a friend and I have infinity friendship slots…. But no, we are not friends.“
This isn’t surprising to me. I’ve been rejected and it never bothered me. But I still feel upset about how when I was in high school my alleged best friend stopped hanging out with me and turned against me because a girl he liked didn’t like me.
This makes total sense to me. The only difference between a romantic pairing and a platonic pairing is the romance/physicality . You spend just as much time and vulnerability investing into friendships as you do romantic partners . When one of those friendships doesn’t pan out, or worse, ends abruptly, it hurts.
Also, there’s a big difference between casual acquaintances , a friend group , and Friends. Casual acquaintances come and go, friend groups contain people that aren’t actually your friends but just part of the group, but people that you call friends are people that you have invited into your life in a vulnerable way.
How about when you become romantically attracted to your platonic friend and get rejected ruining the prospects of both?
I would have thought it would be worse for friendship rejection tbh because you generally go into romantic situations with the expectation that things might not work out but there’s no potential end date for a friendship so when those rejections happen it’s more unexpected
The age old question of power of friendship vs power of love. Friends can be loved and loved ones can be friends. How many people are able to say they would rather have more friends than one loved one. I think you’d be surprised to hear the results.
What’s with all these posts today about „actually, X doesn’t really hurt the feelings of Y“ today?
If you read the article, they didn’t actually test rejection. They tested simulated rejection on app. Since both types of rejections are simulated and not actual rejections, then it should be no surprise they didn’t feel any different.
Depends a lot of the level of directness. I usually don’t ask people „do you want to be my friend“ the same way I might ask someone on a date or for someone to be my girlfriend. So for someone to give me a hard no on friendship it’s gotta be a pretty extreme situation.
Interesting because this is the opposite of my personal life experience. I’ve been deeply heartbroken by romantic rejections, but I’ve never felt even remotely the same level of pain from platonic rejections.
Nonsense. It absolutely hurts more to be rejected from a potential romantic relationship than a potential friendship. The excitement of romantic potential and crush feelings are far more intense than the excitement of a new platonic friend. These headlines do not capture the nuance of the actual studies. Don’t buy this headline.
Personally I’d think it would hurt *more*.
„I don’t wanna date you“ is like yeah, fair enough, I get it, makes sense.
„I don’t wanna be your friend“ is like… well why not? What’s wrong with me.
‘Furthermore, the simulated app environment may not perfectly capture the intense emotions of an in-person rejection.‘
I can understand the ethical limitations, but this does seem like a fairly important caveat. It also misses out what we tend to see as a reaction behaviour wise for at least some people. Not many people are ringing up constantly asking the other person to explain why they were rejected as a friend. That doesn’t inherently linked to feelings but suggests there might be some fairly strong motivational differences at least some of the time.
How about when they reject your grant application when every lame excuse for research gets grant money?
Platonic rejection is way worse. It’s like you’re not even good enough to be their friend.
People persue platonic relationships like they do relationships?
Being autistic I’m slightly awkward, I’d asked people out in the past but the rejections, sure hurt me at the time but I got over them. Me being kicked out of a band I was in 6 years ago? It still bothers me massively as we were friends for a long while.
There’s so much variability though in terms of the different types of friendships, at what age, the individual’s past and present friendships, etc.
I’d be more embarrassed by someone not wanting to be my friend than by them not wanting to bone
Nobody cares but my story: my platonic friend for 8 years cut ties with me because she got engaged and her man was “traditional” and didn’t want her to have male friends. All over text couldn’t even give me a five minute call to say good bye. Still hurts to this day and makes me sad that most likely he’s even more controlling now
Wait, you can get rejected as friends?
Well yeah, obviously.. because if someone won’t even be your friend that’s pretty damning. Y’know? At least with romantic rejection… that’s somewhat understandable… but a friendship? you can have hundreds of friends and I don’t even get to be one of them? No wonder that feels bad.
I get over romantic rejection way quicker. Like this isn’t happening? Ok, cool. Moving on. Losing a friend hurts way more.
I’m very friend-rich but romance-poor.
I don’t even really try to date much because rejection is too painful. But if someone didn’t want to be my friend, I wouldn’t care at all.
I can’t imagine defending such a blanket statement when there are so many complex variables at play.
I suppose this focus on immediate romantic rejections, and not long formed crushes that have had time to build over the course of a lengthy period?
All I can say is, nothing has ever hurt more than being turned down from that, for me. Anecdotal as it is, something about it changed my entire brain chemistry.