How to Turn Someone Down

By Tosin Ojumu

A short ebook from my relationship series and blog: "Finding Mr Huggie-Wuggie" that is all about building an outstanding foundation for an outstanding marriage. This ebook contains 7 articles:

How to Ask Someone Out
This is why experience has taught me that deeply knowing and caring for one another is the right context for a relationship: perhaps above all, because in your pre-romantic interaction, trust has already had a chance to build up between you: you know one another really well, you can vouch for one another; each party trusts that the other person ultimately has their own best interests at heart.

How to Turn Someone Down
So the main point of this post is to communicate that no matter what, you should act with sensitivity towards the feelings of the person who asked you out. I guess I could also talk about the times I have failed to be sufficiently sensitive when being asked out! Sensitivity and gentleness are absolutely key because someone might have had to grab their courage in both hands to actually ask you out (no matter how casual they might make it look.)

Celebrating Some Amazing Friends
But then it occurred to me that actually, I’ve already got so many amazing friends! And I sincerely do. However you would never know it because I am always complaining! But God has blessed me with so many people who love Him and love me. The reason I fail to appreciate these friendships as much as I should is because all these friends are spread out in different places, and I know them all in different contexts. My dream would be for all these outstanding and lovely people to be concentrated in one geographical location, if we all attended the same church service at the same time, every week. And then from that true community could arise. This above all is what my heart craves most deeply, even more, so much more, than it craves Huggie-Wuggie!

Of Husbands and Husbandry
I’m sure most people will have come across the idea that women are supposedly irrational or overly emotional. Personally speaking, I have always resisted this idea, not least on this blog. By the grace of God, I am quite confident that I think in a very logical and rational way. I like to think that I approach my life with common-sense. I like to think through things and build systematic foundations for myself.

Fulfilling His Needs!
I guess that in writing this blog I always assume that (of course, by God’s grace!) I am going to be a great wife! Because I am so sincere about all of this, and I think about it so deeply! Surely from all this I do not need to sit down and explicitly spell out the ways in which I plan to be my very best, for him, in that I have indirectly spelled it out so many times, and I have endlessly communicated my determination in this area!

Talking About...Adultery!
I personally think that there is only one thing that will reliably stop someone from committing adultery. That is an absolute determination to be faithful to your God, via being faithful to your spouse. Even with this, fidelity is not guaranteed. You have got to make up your mind, that no matter what, you will not do this thing! And here is the thing, it does not matter who your spouse is! It does not matter who the potential lure might be!

Please Lord, Let Him Not Ask Me Out!
It might so happen that I meet someone whom I find particularly striking and who seems on first glance to be unspeakably interesting! In this case I could pray and pray and pray – but then leave it to God. If it does happen that he does casually walk into my life in some way – then that would be great! But if not, then that would also be great – it would simply be a matter of trusting God and God’s judgement.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tosin Ojumu
• Release date: Aug 3, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463750797

Tosin Ojumu

Hello, my name is Tosin and for many years I have sat down and thought through questions about how to have an outstandingly successful marriage, and what I need to do before I get married to best ensure that successful marriage. Over the next few weeks and months I aim to publish a new ebook everyday from my blog and relationship series "Finding Mr Huggie-Wuggie." Visit my blog address listed here to see the full list of ebooks as well as video excerpts for each ebook :)

Book preview

How to Turn Someone Down

Copyright 2019 by Tosin Ojumu

Published at Smashwords.com

Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

Table of Contents

How to Ask Someone Out

How to Turn Someone Down

Celebrating Some Amazing Friends

Of Husbands and Husbandry

Fulfilling His Needs

Talking About...Adultery!

Please Lord, Let Him Not Ask Me Out!

Cover image by Hans Braxmeier from Pixabay

The ebook summary is available on my website at https://huggie-wuggie.com/excerpts/ebook-summary-how-to-turn-someone-down/

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How to Ask Someone Out

This ebook was previously posted on my blog "Finding Mr Huggie-Wuggie" on 16 October 2015.

To see this ebook in other formats please check out my website at: https://huggie-wuggie.com/excerpts/how-to-ask-someone-out/

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Well here I am, supposed to be working away. My brain is completely overloaded with information and processing and at the moment I need to take a mental break. Which is why I thought that now would be a good time to write a couple of posts on Finding Mr Huggie-Wuggie!

I was just thinking on these thoughts just a couple of hours ago as I was walking along, and I think that they present quite a light-hearted and easy topic to talk about now, considering how dense my mind feels!

So these are the thoughts then: How to ask someone out. Conversely, and hopefully coming right after this post - How to turn someone down. You see I've been on both sides of this dynamic!

Why is this important?

I would have thought that some of these things were obvious. However, in dealing with people it has become clear that no, apparently these things are not obvious after all! And then there have been the times when I have made my own mistakes too... And yet, as I think on it, perhaps it makes perfect sense that these aspects of interacting with people would of course be fraught and delicate, considering that people's feelings are so tightly bound up in these issues...

Sensible relationships...and how biology does not help!

The more I get to know people, the more I interact with people and consider the topic of relationships, the more convinced I am that there is only one single context in which to build a relationship. Actually, this generalisation might come across as being a little harsh, so let me rephrase it: in my opinion, there is one context which is overwhelmingly and far and away best for building a successful romantic relationship. And that is the context where both parties already know one another very well and deeply care for one another before romantic aspects are introduced to their interaction. This is what I mean when I talk of friendship, as I have many times on my blog. Unfortunately the term friendship is perhaps not particularly useful in itself because it can also mean a much more casual interaction between people or even just seeing them regularly. It is like how you would automatically term people that you meet every week in church as your friends even though you might not necessarily know a lot about them or even know them well enough to know that you do care about them, or you do find deep value in who they are.

This is why experience has taught me that deeply knowing and caring for one another is the right context for a relationship: perhaps above all, because in your pre-romantic interaction, trust has already had a chance to build up between you: you know one another really well, you can vouch for one another; each party trusts that the other person ultimately has their own best interests at heart.

This is true not only of the actual relationship itself, but even of the asking one another out.

Asking someone out involves such vulnerability. It also involves fears of rejection and insecurities etc. This is why I believe it is so important to make sure that you can truly trust the person you're asking out. If you know that they do truly care about you, then you know that they are not going to wilfully or carelessly hurt your feelings.

Where no true trust or mutual care exists, then you start getting these fun things like playing games, insincerity, etc, where the main object appears to be for each party to make the other confess feelings, without having to make themselves vulnerable. Seriously. Has anyone else ever played the Did you receive my email? game? Not fun. I believe that for most people this is actually the Did you receive my text? game. However, being me, and being quite wordy at all times, my version of this game involves emails instead! Also, because it is potentially a relationship, and your vulnerability might be at stake, then you are hyper cautious around this person, and you carefully proceed, waiting from them to visibly sprout horns at any time. If you happen to be