Off the top of my head, I can name a group of guys who "like" every single one of my Facebook posts, message me daily, and will do anything to get my attention. Sure, at times I find it flattering. Other days, I find it extremely annoying.

The dilemma is: I don't want to be rude, but their persistence gets under my skin.

I don't know about you, but I always feel like the guys I like never like me back. I'm always stuck with this pool of men I can never see myself dating. I'm not a difficult woman, but I do have my standards. I'm not just going to date the first guy who calls me pretty or buys me flowers.

Over time, it's reached the point where my patience is running thin. Guys, if I wanted you to talk to me, perhaps I'd already be dating you. Learn to take a hint, please.

And I'm not writing this to come off as a b****. I swear, I mean well. You see, this puts me in an uncomfortable situation that I don't want to be in, and often times, it's an uncomfortable situation that's even harder to get out of.

Like many of you, I hate turning people down. Unfortunately, this gives guys the false hope that we might be into them. For our sanity, we need to find a solution. Recently, I've tried several ways to combat this.

I often go out with a large group to offset the chance that I'll run into these types of guys. Most of the time, it's hit or miss. They might get the message, or they might see the group as a "challenge" to get to me.

Then, when they do message me, I'll give the generic one-word response like "Thanks" or "LOL." Honestly, that never works. They think we're "busy" or just playing "hard-to-get", but that couldn't be further from the truth.

After a series of trial and error, I've realized that I can't control whether someone can take a hint or not. However, I can make an attempt to prevent these awkward situations from even happening in the first place. So here's the solution I came up with: It's all about communication. I know, it may be uncomfortable to tell someone that you're not interested, but it saves you a whole lot of aggravation in the long-run.

Ladies, don't feel obligated to give out your phone number or Facebook when you're talking to someone, and the same goes for men. If you're not interested, just tell them.

Think about it – it's common sense. If you don't give out your information, there's no way of them contacting you, and if they do happen to find you on social media, just don't accept the request.

It's like the zombie apocalypse. If you take precautions, you're more likely to survive. Just kidding.

And for the guys who you DO become interested in and they turn out to be annoying... that's another story.