A difficult result should not erase the courage it took to ask.

Once the answer is no, the asking starts to look naive in hindsight. Memory rewrites it that way: you should have known, you misread the situation, you exposed yourself for nothing. But the asking and the answer were always separate events. One was yours and took something from you; the other belonged to circumstances, timing, and a person whose reasons you may never see.

Keep the record straight in your own account of the week. Note what you did, not only how it turned out. If a hard answer has arrived recently, give yourself time before deciding what it means, and let the willingness to ask survive it.