He wasn’t into me… but his reasons!

So a few years ago I met someone through a dating app. Very nice conversations about our interests, a nice phone call, then we met up. He rejected me then by saying he wanted to be friends, but then not contacting me for over a week. He said he didn't want to get into something halfway (ie neither romantic nor platonic, I suppose). I wasn’t really pushing him to be romantic with me from day one… but I did express that my purpose for being on the app was to find a boyfriend, ie a romantic partner.

Recently, I contacted him, just to really figure out what happened then. The exchange went in a pretty civilized manner, so no yelling or abusing, but he ended up blocking me in the end which i am not upset about. He gave me several reasons for why he rejected me.

1. “You don’t speak the language to a high enough level.”

He is monolingual. I am multilingual with a very good grasp of his language, but not perfect. As Japanese people are often monolingual, I never require people I am interested in dating to speak any of the languages I speak. I try to speak the language of the country I am in. But he said the conversation in real life wasn’t as smooth as my texts.

2. “You didn’t get hints / signals / context.”

I really can only remember trying not to react to certain jabs and passive aggressive things he said, because I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt and I really wanted to see him in a positive light. We were on a first date so I thought it would be rude to say something about how uncomfortable it made me feel when he criticized me for not being fluent enough in his language or not knowing a certain famous person in his country. Or when he told me he had to go to the bathroom right after we ate lunch because he had weak bowels. Everyone has different health issues and I thought it would be rude to say anything back so I just waited for him and we continued.

3. “You are too negative and I am attracted to positive women.”

He said that because he himself had the tendency to be negative, he was attracted to positive and bright girls. He told me I was too negative, even though I was really happy to be going on a date with someone who I thought I could talk to about mutual interests. I was a bit shy and insecure, but I don’t have any memory of saying something super negative. If I did, it might have been about myself. The only thing I remember is that I was being really calm and not really super upbeat, as I didn’t want to come off strong in character, since the men here like women who are slightly on the docile side. He himself was not happy-go-lucky or brimming with enthusiasm, so I guess I matched his energy so as not to overwhelm him in any way.

So…

In the end, I told him that although I didn’t agree with most of what he said, I had not contacted him for the purpose of changing his mind or rekindling anything, since there was not a lot to begin with. But I let him know how I felt. That I had purposefully tried to ignore a lot of negativity he threw at me, because I didn’t want to be rude to him. I wanted to accept the person in front of me in the moment, and so I forgot about any ideal I had of the perfect friend or romantic partner in my head, so I could interact with the person I was with fully. (Truthfully, it was also because I didn’t want to get rejected by someone I thought I could have interesting conversations with, that could potentially become a significant other.)

It really feels strange because although he rejected me with such grand reasons, I don’t think he was anything special as a person. He was average in looks and body, average in his profession, average in his family history. He was a smoker, which I was trying to overlook. He was subtly rude to me on the date and semi-ghosted me after it. He had no interest in me at all, I understand that, but what gets to me is that he is so average it hurts, but felt I was unworthy of his time because of these standards that were so inflated compared to what he was offering himself.