Never Enough

At the end of the internship, my Ex asked to speak with the head of department about job opportunities. Although she wasn’t enthusiastic about working at that place, it might have been a stepstone until something better comes up.

When I picked her up from work, I noticed that she had written “be insensitive” on her hand. The talk didn’t go as well as hoped for. The head told her outright that he doesn’t have a position for her due to formal requirements. This outcome agitated her and lead her later to write on her hand to calm down.

She told me in the car how her colleagues had persuaded her the days prior to ask for a job. When she confronted one colleague that there was no position for her, the colleague countered that is was her decision whether she asks or not. My Ex made a point that her intuition told her not to ask and told me an anecdote, in which she was the victim of a minor conspiracy at university to hide the misdemeanor of a staff member. In that anecdote, she emerged unscathed because she remained authentic.

I could relate to her emotional response, because rejection is unpleasant. I tried to bring in a rational assessment: if she didn’t ask for a job, she wouldn’t gain anything. Now that she asked and got a rejection, she has gotten clarity and can stop pondering whether that place is an opportunity. Her decision to ask was right, even if the outcome was undesirable. Her rationalization was different: she has been right not to ask and her colleagues have been wrong. In her narcissistic narrative, she denied responsibility for her decision and claimed to be a victim of her colleagues talking her into something that she wasn’t convinced of.