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Hi! I need some advice on how to (nicely) let someone know you aren't interested in them! My friend has told me on numerous occasions that he is very interested in me and wants to go out with me! I already have a boyfriend, who I am very much in love with and have been dating for 4 1/2 yrs! I think of this person as only a friend, but recently he is texted me about wanting to hang out with me and even talked about spending the entire weekend at my apartment with me! I was hoping that he could come up for ONLY PART of the day, like a Sunday or Saturday afternoon, to meet some of my friends and my boyfriend! Does anyone have any advice on how I can gently let my friend know I'm not interested in dating him? Thanks!

So saying you have a boyfriend AND that you're not interested in him doesn't convince him that you're not interested? Creepy dude. Sounds a bit obsessive and stalkerish. But maybe I'm jumping to conclusions.

There's no better stopper than to tell him in his face why you would never date him.

You only need to tell him you would never date a man that knows a girl has a long term boyfriend (is he a friend of your BF? add that in there for it is even worse!) and who doesn't have the integrity to respect that by trying to break them up for his benefit.

Hi, I first want to say I think it's great you're asking for advice. Being an NT, I can tell you this is not an easy situation for anyone ever. I have to somewhat agree with the first comment on your post that, if tell g this guy you have a BF doesn't clue him in, you may have a problem on your hands so please be careful. If you haven't already done so, you need to be brutally honest with this guy. You need to sit down (preferably in a public place or even safely over the phone) and tell him, "look, I'm feeling like maybe you have the wrong idea about my feelings and intentions towards you. I cherish your friendship but, that's it. I only see you as a friend and there will never be anything more there from me. I'm very sorry if this hurts you or if I've made you feel in anyway that I was open to a more intimate relationship. I don't want to loose you as a friend but, I do need you to acknowledge and respect that I don't feel the same way and I have a boyfriend that I care for very much. If you honestly feel that you are okay with just being friends, I'd love for us to continue our friendship. However, if you don't think that you are able to be JUST my friend, then maybe we should say our good byes now."

I hate to say, even if he agrees to JUST being friends, he'll likely not be able to honor that. Especially when faces with seeing you and your BF together. So, you may have to cut him loose even as a friend at some point. Just be careful because things could very well get creepy and fast with this guy. If telling him yourself doesn't do it, maybe (provided your BF is not a hot headed jealous BF lol), you may need your BF to pull him aside and have a talk with him.

Good luck and I hope it goes well for you. I've been "that girl" that had feelings when he didn't and it sucks but, friendships can still exist if this guy ever saw you as just a friend to begin with. If not, your friendship will likely fade away after he's tries unsuccessfully to be just your friend. As for the wanting to stay the whole weekend, just tell him you don't think (under the circumstances) it would be appropriate and you wouldn't want your BF to be made to feel uncomfortable or not understand that you two are just friends.

One last note: I'd share all of this with your BF again only if he's not the type to be a jerk to the poor fella.

This method, while effective lol, may not really have the "not hurting the guy's feelings" effect that she was wanting. That said, sometimes there's no alternative to hurting someone's feelings in these situations. His feelings will likely be hurt just because you don't reciprocate his feelings if wanting a more intimate relationship with you.

To add onto what I've already said.

My ex had a girl that was extremely obsessed with him while I was dating him. She was texting him everyday and asked him to get together and also to have sex (ugh). He was worried about hurting her feelings and to be honest, that in itself ruined my trust in him. When he cares about her feelings that much, there's something underlying there. So to go back to your situation, maybe you like this guys attention, like my ex liked hers. Or maybe you like this guy more than you think. Not sure. But if I am "in love" with a guy, I'm not gonna hesitate hurting someone's feelings after I tried different approaches of telling them I'm not interested. I don't want my boyfriend to get insecure about another person and I don't want to deal with someone that obsessive about me because that's creepy.

While I can certainly understand how you would think that, it's not always the case. Sometimes we meet ppl throughout our lives that we cherish as friends. The fact that person views us in a different light doesn't change our feelings about them. It's not always a sign that we have "underlying" more than friendship feelings about them. The fact that you lost trust in your ex may very well have been more because of your own insecurities than because of his actions. Obviously, without being there and seeing/hearing everything that transpired between the two of you, I can only say that as a possibility. You could have very well have been correct in your assumptions that he had more feelings for his ex than he was letting on. But, why would he share that she was propositioning him with you if he really did want to hook up with her? That really doesn't make very much sense. Unless, of course, he was trying to make you jealous. But, even then, if he cared more for her than you, why not just break up with you and go back to her?!

Sometimes we humans want and even need the attention of others more from time to time in order for us to feel important or feel like we're as important to that person as they are to us. It's such a fine line that it's hard even for us NTs to determine where it lies. But, kudos to you for making a decision to not be toyed with. If indeed you were getting vibes that his feelings for his ex were more than what he told you, it's better that you cut off the relationship rather than let yourself be strung along through a "love triangle" for any extended period of time.

I think that it's human nature to pick up on certain aspects of a persons behavior and that goes for ALL ppl. Having Aspergers, in my opinion, doesn't mean you are incapable of reading ppl all the time. If you are a female, you have the added advance of a woman's intuition and, if you feel like something fishey is going on, it likely is and you really should just come out and tell your partner how you're feeling and try the honesty approach first. If you continue to feel like he's not on the up and up, cut him loose and move on.

I have to admit that I didn't read everything you wrote since it's long and my attention span isn't too good today. But he didn't tell me what she was saying. I found it out on accident when I was using his phone and she texted. She wrote "I'm so stressed, what would make me feel better is sex with you". And you betcha I brought it up. He said "she keeps trying and I feel bad telling her no so I just ignore her". He said she didn't know he was dating me. So I told him to tell her. He reluctantly did. But eventually drama went down when she wrote to me on Facebook telling me they had sex. My ex said she was lying and trying to break us up but I don't know what to believe. I ended it right then. Sure, other people's relationships and situations can be different from mine, but I'm allowed to tell one situation and perspective. It's not useful to hide all the different perspectives or situations. The OP asked for help and I said one idea and thought process and you're saying another perspective. Really bugs me that some people on this website hate others perspectives. The OP can make the decision to throw out my perspective if she wants .


And you'd be surprised to find out that my ex and the woman who did this was 30 and 34. The story sounds so childish when I read it.

THIS THIS, A thousand times THIS.

This has happened to me before as well. A guy kept texting my then girlfriend and she would complain about all his texting and calling and badgering yet she would respond to the texts and never tell him to flat out stop and ignore his texts due to not wanting to hurt his feelings.

I believed her at first, then I wised up and realized she both A) enjoyed the attention and B) was flirting back with him.

From then on, whenever another guy is texting a girl I'm dating all the time and she hasn't told him to stop or claims she has but somehow he keeps bothering her - because oh wait, she's responding to his texts - Yeah I'm breaking it off right then and there. Deal breaker. Anyone who's on their phone too much is a deal breaker for me. I'm not a big texter, caller and I don't have a facebook so I'm not part of the online social networking obsession either. I don't mind if the person I'm dating has one as I did used to, nor do I mind if they enjoy texting and calling people more often than me, but when it gets to the point that we're on a date or hanging out together and she keeps craning her neck down to check/look/reply to a text or something on facebook, then she can forget it.
If she wants to be on facebook or text, she can do that without me sitting around looking and feeling like a jack**s.


To the OP, you don't have to be rude to the guy and you don't have to be polite either. Just be upfront and honest. Why is it so hard to simply say, "Hey, I'm not interested in you that way, I'm happily in a committed relationship with my boyfriend whom I'm in love with." It's neither nice nor mean, and it's the truth. What's so hard about that?

There are some people who, if nobody tells them they're out of line, how are they to know? If they already know they're intruding, how are they to ever develop respect for boundaries when people are too worried about their feelings to enforce them?

I'll never know. My boyfriend would be terrified that eventually I wouldn't be able to put my foot down while drunk, or at someone's house, etc, and those feelings would matter a lot more to me than those of someone who can be hurt upfront or after intruding indefinitely and just giving up.

Exactly. What he is doing is not only unethical but may also cause trust issues between the couple. Personally I would much rather hurt the feelings of one friend who is being an ass, no matter how much I care about him/her than to have his/her behavior screw up my long term relationship with someone.