I know you’re hurting, buddy. I’ve been there myself, many, many times. So let me share a little beta-male lesson I’ve learned about rejection, pain, and the passage of time:

It’ll sting forever.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) invited Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to sit next to him at the State of the Union address — but the former House Speaker says she’s already committed.

“I thank @GOPLeader for his #SOTU offer, but I invited my friend Rep. [Roscoe] Bartlett from MD yesterday & am pleased he accepted,” Pelosi tweeted…

The Cantor-Pelosi duo would likely have been awkward, however. The new GOP majority leader on Monday singled out Pelosi for unprompted criticism while he praised her chief deputy, Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.). Cantor and Hoyer were scheduled to have lunch Tuesday, and Cantor noted that while he and Hoyer met throughout the last Congress, he and Pelosi did not…

As far back as June 2009, Cantor complained that then-Speaker Pelosi refused to meet with him.

Maybe the lesson here is that you shouldn’t bother asking a girl out if you’ve been dumping on her for years. Or is the lesson that a former Speaker is simply out of a majority leader’s league? Perhaps the lesson is simply that, in a dating environment this competitive, you need to be a stone-cold alpha to land a partner. Speaking of which, Joe “You Lie!” Wilson? Sitting with not one but two Democratic ladies this evening. Damn.

To sum up: On a day when Lebanon is falling apart, Egypt’s reeling from the biggest democratic protests it’s seen in years, and the Palestinian Authority may or may not be facing a looming revolt in the West Bank over “the Palestine Papers,” our elected representatives are playing musical chairs and talking about “cooties.” Click the image to watch.