The Yo-Yo Effect

How to best deal with past rejection

A reader raised a practical question about how to deal with a previously uninterested woman and I take exception to another reader’s response.

Anyone else experience the Yo-Yo effect? I assume it is very common. You know, getting brutally flamed when she’s in her early twenties and then - Poof! - she’s back when she hits her late twenties. Suddenly, you’re off the bench and back in the game. I can’t be the only one, right?

Many men, and all late bloomers, have experienced this from time to time. And even when there is no question of one party being interested in another, the relative change in the attraction balance over time can be absolutely startling. I had three notable incidents that made an impression on me.

• The beautiful Finnish girl who came to our elementary school when I was in 5th grade, and upon whom I had a serious crush for two years, did not transit adolescence well. When I saw her again for the first time in five years, in our junior year of high school, I was absolutely astonished to realize that she wasn’t someone it would even occur to me to ask out. She was still very personable, though, and we became friendly to the point that I subsequently helped her pick out her prom dress. That was the first time I became aware of the cruel transience of female beauty.

• The same year, I discovered that the girl who had rejected my overtures in 8th grade was telling everyone that we had been an item three years prior. When asked about this, I just laughed and said: “yeah, I wish,” and set the matter straight. I wasn’t butt-hurt about it nor did I attempt to conceal the earlier rejection, I simply viewed her historical revisionism as a positive testament to my increased status with the girls.

• The day after Spacebunny and I got married, we went my brother’s high school soccer game before going to the airport for our honeymoon. We sat next to a lovely woman who had been the head cheerleader, a princess on the Homecoming court, and the most attractive, most popular girl in my class. She had always been very likeable and kind to everyone, and she was still very much the same gracious individual I had known throughout six years of junior high and high school, but somehow the ten years after high school had transformed her from a gorgeous cheerleader into a modestly attractive Midwestern hausfrau. It was more than a little discombobulating to see the degree to which my stunning new wife surpassed the girl who had been the creme de la creme of my high school, which was not at all lacking for pretty girls.

  

  The transience of female beauty is cruel.

So that’s the context to frame my response to the second reader’s assertion of the right way to address a situation involving the Yo-Yo Effect.

The proper attitude is “if I wasn’t good enough for you at your peak, then you’re not good enough for me now that your value is only declining every single day until you die, while mine is still rising.”

I’m not saying that this specific logic is false in every situation, but I think that it is definitely the wrong attitude for four reasons: