The latter I guess? Because at least for the former, you tried.
surely having a low self-esteem is worse. life goes on. why bother over that one single log when you’ve got all the forest to explore?
Go all in. See your crush with someone else, confess your feelings to them loudly and in front of their current partner, ugly cry when it goes badly. Leave telling them you’ll wait for them. Text the partner later to say “nothing personal, I’m the right person for Crush and we both know it”.
Let me think, is there anything else one could do to make it more desperate and toxic? Without crossing into actual criminal harassment and stalking of course.
Find a partner who looks similar to Crush, replace their wardrobe with virtually identical clothes to Crush, along with haircut, perfume, etc.
Constantly visit shops close to Crush’s house, so it’s “coincidence” when you bump into Crush and Partner.
From there, before they can talk their way out of an awkward situation, joke about how they look like twins, and that fantasy has always appealed to you.
Being rejected the first few times is very unpleasant but very important to go from child to adult.
You tried and you’ll get a high five from me, a complete stranger on the internet.
Seeing your crush with someone else will teach you the lesson to kill off non mutual feelings and move on. An important lesson but you did not choose to be brave and take it.
As for what feels the worst in the moment that depends on context and how many times you’ve had it happen before.
I’ve experienced both.
I worked up the courage to ask her out after some of her friends assured me she was single, and said I had a good chance.
She was great about it, said she was flattered and let me down gently with the “oh, I would, but sorry I have a boyfriend” line. I thought it was an excuse to soften the rejection.
A week later I saw her walking on campus holding hands with a guy, and later I saw her in class sitting on his lap. Turns out she really did have a secret boyfriend for almost a month that she didn’t tell her friends about, but after she said it to me, she felt she could make it public.
To answer your question, getting rejected was not as bad as I thought, but seeing her with someone else was unexpectedly worse for me.
I dropped out of that uni at the end of the semester and never saw her again, but still occasionally think about her.
“In class sitting on his lap”. Do people really do this? Seems disrespectful towards the teacher/lecturer (might be just cultural differences, I am not from the US).
