As sad as it is to say, most (if not all) women have experienced unwanted attention or advances in some shape or form, myself included. Its something my close female friends and I talk about fairly often, sharing stories, sometimes kind of funny in hindsight and other times downright creepy.
Recently, one of my friends sent me some screenshots of texts that a random guy had sent her. He was essentially asking her to hang out (she has a boyfriend, and the random guy knows this) and my friend was asking for advice on how to turn him down without being rude. She wanted help to find an excuse to say no.
Now this situation might not sound weird to most people, I mean I don’t know many people who are intentionally rude when turning down invites for dates or for just hanging out, but this whole exchange between my friend and this random guy really got me thinking. Why do women feel the need to have an “excuse” or a “reason” for turning down dates other than simply not being interested? Why doesn’t a simple “thanks but no thanks” suffice?
To get into more detail, my friend did eventually tell the guy that she couldn’t hang out because she had plans, but the guy still persisted. So this brings up some more questions, why do guys continue to pursue a girl, even after being shut down? When did the meaning of “no” become “try harder”?
These are not new ideas but I haven’t seriously sat down and thought about it all until now. Having been in a similar but not identical situation to my friend, with a not so great outcome, I can understand how hard it can be to turn someone down without hurting the other person’s feelings. However, there comes a point when it’s not all that important what the other person is feeling, but what you are feeling is important.
A lot of people, both men and women, have a hard time being upfront and honest when they aren’t interested in someone, because they don’t want to hurt the other person’s feelings. Women in particular though seem to have the most trouble because it seems that these days, men are conditioned by society to believe that a “no” means “maybe” or “try harder”. Women on the other hand, are conditioned to believe that if they say “no” directly, it’s rude or impolite so they have to find a reason or excuse to not be interested, because simply being uninterested in a mans advances is not seen as a good enough reason in society’s messed up eyes.
I don’t blame my friend for wanting to let that random guy down easy and as nicely as possible, I have been in that position and done the exact same thing. But when someone doesn’t respect you enough to take no for answer, do they really deserve a nice, sweet response?
