Turned down, turned sour

Stalking, sarcasm, squabbles about money. Who'll teach the dating crowd about handling rejection better?

- Urvee Modwel

Dating is hard for women. First, we must sift through the creeps to find a decent person on an app. Then, we must chat enough to want to meet. Then, when we do go out for drinks, we insist on splitting the bill and are told we don't need to. But over the evening, it turns out, there's no spark (or he reveals that his favourite movie is Animal, from last year. Ugh!). So, we text the next day that we'd prefer being friends. He readily agrees. But five minutes later, he texts back, detailing the bill from last night, breaking down who ate and drank what, and where to send our share of the costs. Wait, what? We owe him because we rejected him?

When it happened to 38-year-old marketing communications executive, Nandini Malik this July, she was taken aback. It reminded her, all over again, that most men - even the ones who don't plot acid attacks - find it hard to process rejection. And as more young people look for their own partners and exercise their own right of refusal, the rules on who gets to say no, and what happens after, aren't clear to everyone.