A realization (plus gratitude!) I was kind of an awkward kid during my school years. I suppose you could consider me a late bloomer. Every so often, I'd work up the courage to ask a popular/pretty girl out and I'd get serially rejected. It sucked at the time, especially when I'd have intense crushes on some of them, you know, the immature "oh I wanna be with you forever and marry you and have kids with you" thinking. It especially hurt because some of the rejections would be laugh-in-your-face cruel. It's been years now and I just realized (and verified this via facebook) that every single girl I was attracted to (and rejected by) during that period have all since ballooned in size and attitude. Some of them have married their high school boyfriends -- a bunch are single mothers. They're all incredibly unattractive compared to their former selves. They're literal fat worthless wrecks and the self-righteous tones they affect are absolutely insufferable. Mentally, they also behave as if they're still school girls, which makes sense given their "glory (hole) days." So in hindsight, they did me a favor turning me down instead of locking me down like the leeches they turned out to be. I crunched some general numbers and was mortified to see how much money and opportunity I would've pissed away if I'd settled down with any of those hams. Conversely, I'm still on friendly speaking terms with many of the girls I did date during high school, so I suppose it worked out. You know that movie/TV trope where the fat ugly girl in high school turns out to be a hot model when she grows up? She's sexy, confident and it's her turn to reject all the boys now! Interestingly, I couldn't find a single instance of that. All the fat ugly girls remained fat and ugly. If anything, they got fatter. And uglier. If there are any young folks here going through the pains of rejection, just know you probably dodged a bullet in all likelihood. Don't settle for less -- you're better than that.