When Wooing is Harassment

Refusing to take no for an answer isn’t romantic, no matter what the movies tell us.

I’m a fan of Dan Savage’s “Savage Lovecast.” In a recent episode, Dan answered a call from a woman who dated a man for a while, realized she wasn’t into him, and ended the relationship. The man asked if they could stay friends, and then spent months clearly trying to woo her back. He thinks of her all the time, she said, and does things like sending her a series of hand-made birthday gifts and offering her father a kidney.

That latter craziness was the focus of the call and response, but I want to address something else — because I have been this guy. My teen years, into my early twenties, featured a series of women who turned me down for relationships, who I then continued to pursue and work to impress and change their minds.

I thought myself unlucky in love, unappreciated. That’s how I was taught to regard myself by a whole series of romantic comedies and television shows in the 1980s: The guy who gets passed over, who some girl will eventually realize she loved all along. You just have to stick it out, and win her affection through some grand romantic gestures, right?

No. What I was doing is harassment. A gentle sort of harassment, true, nothing on a level with Harvey Weinstein or…