Why Girls Often Say "No" the First Time

1902

By Edith Joscelyn

It has been remarked that when a woman says "No" it should not — by the man who loves her — be taken for a negative. There may be an element of truth in this statement; or there may be not. I, as a girl, who thinks that she knows what she is writing about, would say that it all depends upon the character of the woman who utters the little word. If she is a poor, weak sort of creature who is certain of nothing, and who likes to hear the same thing over and over again, much after the fashion of a young mother listening to her first baby's initial utterances, she will undoubtedly say "No" when she all the time really means the very opposite.

I have known a few instances, however, in which women who knew their own minds perfectly have been impelled to say an emphatic negative when receiving an offer of marriage from a man whom they loved passionately, while conscious all the time that they would eventually say a cooing affirmative. It was this way: The men proposing were, so to speak, on trial at the bar. They were suspected of offering marriage out of pity, or out of pique, or from a sense of justice.

A woman is frequently made the recipient of an offer on these grounds, and the trick of saying "No" when the question is first put is the one and only way of discovering whether the man sincerely means what he says.

The instinct of many of us women will clearly tell us when a man is making an offer that is not genuine, but sometimes we dare not trust to our instinct; we hope against hope, and we play our fish with evasive answers until we see that he really means what he says from the bottom of his heart.

It is not long since that I met a man who told me of a friend of his who had suddenly discovered that he would be better off in many respects were he to marry. He straightaway went the round of a number of girl friends and proposed to four of them in one day! They each rejected him, as he thought, by saying "No" on the putting of the great question. But two out of the four wrote to him on the day following, accepting! In the meantime he had made a fifth proposal and had been accepted.

When a girl has been courted for an unusually long period and has at last received the long-expected proposal she will feign astonishment and will give a qualified "No." This is only her banter, and she will follow it up by laughingly explaining that she punished him because — by his delay — he punished her! Shyness or a different position in life are common causes for such delays on the part of many men.

As a rule, it may be taken for granted that no woman says "No" without a reason for doing so.

One more instance: Two sisters recently fell in love with the same man, who was a close friend of their brother's. The man proposed to the younger sister, and she said "No" because she knew that her sister wanted him. Yet when, in course of time, the man made the offer of marriage to the elder sister she likewise said "No" for the identical reason — that she knew her sister wanted him. The girls' love for each other has up to the present kept the man a bachelor.