Rejection at seventeen fades in a week. Wondering at thirty can last a decade.

A no is sharp and brief, and the mind is built to recover from it faster than you expect. An unasked question has no such ending; it stays available for revisiting at any quiet moment for years. The pain of rejection is intense and finite, while the pain of not knowing is mild and open-ended.

Weigh the two honestly the next time you are deciding whether to ask. Take the sharp one. A week of feeling bad is a much better deal than a decade of wondering.