Reply to s/o How do you politely, but without lying, reject overtures of friendship?

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Reply to "s/o How do you politely, but without lying, reject overtures of friendship?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I do know someone who is VERY needy with my time and will not take no for an answer.

She wants to hang out with me all the time and I had to be a little more upfront with her. If you try to push the hangout off she will follow up and push until you agree. Just turning down an invitation wasn't enough.

If she sees a picture of me doing something with other friends she will message me saying when are we going to do that. She only wants to hang out one on one so it's not like she is pushing to be included.

Frankly, hanging out with her is draining. Covid in some ways has made things easier, but she was very upset not to be included in my bubble (she has a job where she interacts with a lot of people and has had multiple scares so this was truly a safety reason, but she was still insulted). So I do think there are situations where you need to be more upfront.[/quote]

I agree this is a real issue (tho not at all what the other thread was about). I do think there’s a real question in this case as to whether you should just be direct or try to fade out. I had an acquaintance like this and did the long fade out, but it actually seemed to make things worse. I remember once she invited me to a holiday thing and it was like the 11th invite I’d gotten from her in three months (all of which is politely declined without specifying a reason). I decided to just not reply at all and see what happened because I was exhausted and didn’t know how else to communicate that I wasn’t interested. Well, she got really angry and told me to my face that she thought I was a b*tch and talked negatively about me to mutual friends. I was stunned, because I’ve definitely had people just not RSVP to a group event before and never thought it was a big deal. I don’t know why she was do hurt (I’m a good friend but we just did not have compatible personalities, so it’s not like she was missing out anything).

So in that case I do wonder if it would have been better to say, “Sorry Larla, I appreciate the invites but I’m just not in the market for a new friend right now.” Maybe being more direct would have helped. Though I should note that it still would have been a lie, as I would have been happy to make a new friend at that point, I just wasn’t into this woman as a friend.

But this is a specific situation.[/quote]

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