First Impressions

Rejection always hurts, but what’s maddening is when you feel like they didn’t reject the real you, but just the way you happened to come across one day.

I once met a woman at a restaurant who I was completely enthralled by, and we made plans to go out together. The day that we were supposed to meet, she told me she had to cancel, so I went out with my buddy to a bar instead, and we spent the afternoon throwing back some beers. Then, she ended up being able to make it after all, and as I was impatient to see her, I decided to try to stick to the plans we had originally made.

I hadn’t felt too intoxicated before agreeing to meet, but something about the rush of nerves that come with that first date had my head all abuzz when the time actually came. I showed up and made a fool of myself. I couldn’t remember things, blabbed a bunch, and generally acted, well, drunk.

I attempted to clear things up by apologizing afterwards and explaining how it had happened, but it seemed the more I said that the worse I made the situation. It was completely irreconcilable. In the end, I was left with nothing but embarrassing memories that’ll probably haunt me in some small way for as long as I live.

I’ve had the same experience shortly after moving to Japan, where I’d meet someone I like, but I’m in a state of such internal turbulence that I can’t just be myself. First off, I’m nervous and slightly uncomfortable being so out of my natural element culturally — constantly getting lost on my way to a date, dropping food with my chopsticks, not being able to communicate with the waiter, etc., all add a lot of extra stress.

Then, with all my travels, I’m sleep deprived and have my mind filled with all that I’ve done and still need to do, and I find myself forgetting things that I otherwise never would. I’m also a bit emotionally vulnerable, as the loneliness is a novel experience — and not just in the big ways like not having the people I’d normally hangout with around, but in small ways as well, such as not being able to fluidly interact with the workers at the coffee shop or grocery store.

I understand what’s to be done in situations where you make a bad impression and the other person is no longer interested in you: nothing. You let them be, and you try to bury that sad sense of regret as soon as possible. Yet, I have a hard time accepting the full weight of what’s transpired.

We’re talking about human connection here and all the potential that holds. If this could’ve been, under different circumstances, a kindred spirit, then that bad first impression may have just cost me a friend for life or a serious romantic partner.

There are few life decisions that lead us to such starkly different paths like the decisions about who we choose to spend our time with. Imagine that if, over the course of my adult life, I’ve met a dozen or half dozen people on the wrong nights, and thereby squandered my chance of seeing where our relationship could’ve gone. How many forks in the road is that where things might’ve gone off the best possible track?

What if, of all the women I’ve met, I let the one that would’ve been the best match for me slip away because of unfortunate circumstances? If only I hadn’t gotten such bad news that morning, or been so rundown by work, or felt so out of place in the venue, etc., what might’ve come of it?

My past relationships all changed me and changed my lifepath in countless ways. Each of them had points at which a small decision, yes or no, could’ve precluded the whole thing. The lessons learned, the love felt, the experiences had — spanning years — could’ve all been lost to a brief moment of poor luck.

I feel I’ve lost some beautiful people and beautiful moments to the ill of a bad first impression. And I don’t say this from the point of view of romanticizing strangers and assuming some idealized version of them. I know only that if I remained a bit hung up on them that there was at least the potential for something, and that it’s likely there could have indeed been something real, with at least one from this host of people who there were signs of good possibilities with— and that relationship will now never happen. It’s a haunting thought.

Yet, I cannot ask for more. The reader might suggest that “If they weren’t willing to continue with you after one bad impression, then they weren’t the one for you.” But I disagree. A person is their first impression, unless and until we get to know them better. They’re not actually rejecting you at all; they’re rejecting a very off-putting image of you, and one that is quite hard to shake.

It’s no small feat to rewrite our initial impressions of a person. All the information we learn about them thereafter is based on that and connected to it. We interpret all of their actions and all the facts about their life through that pre-established lense. Just as many times as I’ve been on one side of it, I’ve been on the other.

When we first meet someone we like, they’re veiled in our attraction. Everything they do is taken in the best light. When our attraction is weakened for whatever reason, this effect is reversed. Now, what’s relatively normal can strike us as odd and aversive. There is a momentum to our emotional build up in this way, pushing us further into whichever direction we’re already heading.

I’ve tried to change the way I see a person and found it like walking through quicksand. It’s a conscious and effortful process, and one that you seldom find the motivation to endure. Why would I expect any different from the people who have come to feel this way towards me?

Yet, it’s like being trapped in Kafka’s Metamorphosis, or stuck in a different body, or locked on the wrong side of a two-way mirror. I can see myself as I am, and I can see them. Yet, I know that what they see is not me as I am. This, however, cannot be communicated because with so many people lacking in self-awareness, we all know not to trust people’s self-perceptions over the way we see them directly.

One can try to plead and say, “No, I’m actually not like this” but it just strikes the ear as a lack of self-knowledge. The more we persist, the more desperate and unhinged we come across. It is trying to convince someone that what they see and feel is not as it is — a truly fruitless endeavor.

Yet, if there’s any hope, it’s that we’ve all been there. We should do our best to be patient, and to take a chance on any who claim to be more than what they first appear as. We can do it with the hope that in the moments when we’re the victim of this mistaken identity someone will be willing to believe that we are not just deluded.