Technically, yes, you can consider that behavior a rejection, but you also have to realize that this act is an attempt for her to do the nicest thing she can probably do in such a situation. As I said, women do not like to crush nice men, but they certainly will if they are forced to. These women are trying to spare such men from misery while trying to spare themselves from an awkward discomfort in being the source of it. In a sense, they are not rejecting the man with this vibe, per say. They are rejecting previous experiences they have had with other men who have given off that same vibe. It's not personal, but when you're on the receiving end, it is extremely difficult not to take it that way.
Everyone does this. I have had negative experiences with some women, and because of those experiences, I have a certain prejudice whenever I see another woman who shares a particular look or has some of the same mannerisms that those ex's had. I know absolutely nothing at all about these women, but I avoid them like the plague nonetheless.
What makes this a negative feedback loop is a high dependency on the idea that a man must stop doing all of the wrong things in order to get all of the right results. That can certainly help things, without a doubt, but the truth is that a man can still succeed with women even when doing some things wrong....so long as he does enough of the right things that women have a higher level of preference for.
For example, a good looking guy can get away with being shy and somewhat quiet. A very sociable and outgoing guy can get away with having very average, unimpressive looks. But the odds will always be stacked heavily against a shy, quiet, average looking guy.
If a man is giving off the vibe of desperation and loneliness, the solution is not to find someone to stop the loneliness. It is to accentuate whatever strengths that can help dispel the vibe of a person who is lonely. A lonely man, for example, will have a tendency to shower a woman with 10 times more attention that she provides him, whereas a man who is not lonely will have more of a tendency to be friendly and sociable but nonchalant with the attention a woman provides. A lonely man will tend to laugh at something a pretty woman might say that isn't really that funny at all, whereas a man who isn't lonely will be far more likely to playfully tease her about how awful the joke was.
Now, none of these behaviors actually change the fact that the man is lonely and in search for someone, but they do dispel the very vibe that plays a fairly significant role in preventing any change in that status from occurring.
I made that post under the assumption that the OP was simply dealing with a confidence issue. While it is still relevant to the OP, deeper-seeded issues have come up since that comment. Those issues need to be addressed, and are an entirely different matter.
These things can be pin-pointed, but neither I nor can anyone else here do that without knowing what a person's particular weaknesses and possible strengths are. That requires a person to be very honest with themselves and with everyone else when conveying these things. That is where this discussion is going. The numbers game thing is something that will come into play after these issues are addressed.