Rejecting an obsessive person, part one - in real life.

When a yandere - or a significantly clingy, but non-yandere person - takes interest in you, and you're not interested in them, what do you do? Resign yourself to being in a relationship with them, whether you like it or not? Of course not. However, rejecting someone who might ignore the common phrase "no means no" could require a little more finesse than simply telling them that you're not interested. Let's go over some of the things a person should do in such a situation.

If you're in this situation, one of the first questions you should ask yourself is, "Why, exactly, is this person pursuing me?" Does this person only want to have sex with you? Is this person demanding to be your girlfriend? Is this person upset with you and only wants to make you miserable? In any case, you'll need to determine what it is they want from you, in order to know how to defuse the situation.

The first situation is the most difficult to deal with because it's the only one which inherently implies that it's taking place in the real world, not on the internet, while the other two could go either way. If you have a stalker or anything similar in the real world, they're obviously going to be more difficult to disassociate with than someone on the internet; I don't have to tell you that there are no "Delete Contact" buttons that work in meatspace. But this doesn't mean your situation is hopeless. If a person is ever too clingy toward you in the real world and they're a complete stranger, consider what the writers did in the two multi-paragraph stories in this linked post.

Without a doubt, crying or having another loud, attention-grabbing response is a terrific reaction to being in such a situation, if your safety is your main concern. However, one thing to avoid is having an angry, attention-grabbing response. In most cases where people don't interfere with someone being victimized right before their eyes, there's an obvious element of danger - the fear that if a bystander gets involved, they will also be harmed, so they believe they should stand back and wait for someone else to help instead. Thus, no one helps.

If you remove the yelling and aggression from such a situation and replace it with crying or distress, people are far more likely to help, as they helped the girl in the second story you read earlier. But what about situations when the person isn't a complete stranger - when it's someone who knows you personally, including where you live? Again: at your nearest possible convenience, having a sort of breakdown with as many people present as possible has a strong chance of getting the aggressor to back off, thanks to strangers getting involved and showing them that what they're doing is wrong.

As messed up as it is, some people are taught by parents, coaches, peers, and other figures to be overly aggressive from early childhood. Some believe that they know what other people want better than they do. Some are just selfish and don't want to take "no" for an answer. Some are taught that being only assertive - not aggressive - is a good thing, but they go overboard with it. Some major businesses even endorse policies with names like "two 'no's and a 'go'" to train their employees to reject a customer's first "no, I don't want this" and to continue making a sales pitch until the customer says "no" a second time.

On the opposite end of that spectrum are people who may well be as shy as the two girls in those two stories. After speaking with a counselor for a long time or receiving a pep talk from a friend, today's finally the day they worked up the courage to try asking a girl out on a date - and in public, no less! Talk about working on their confidence. Keeping this in mind, if we re-examine the second story and ignore as much of the storyteller's bias as we can, it's easy to see that the person in her story may have only had good intentions.

Despite this, the bus driver (and presumably others, since they were yelling at him) assumed he had downright evil intentions. Have you ever rode on public transportation and raised your voice so loudly for an entire conversation that everyone on the bus could hear it, all the way up to the bus driver at the very front? Chances are that you haven't, and that neither did this guy. With all the chatter, loud noises of other vehicles and ongoing activity inside and outside the bus, and with his mind focused mostly on the road, few would argue that the bus driver heard or noticed anything until he stopped the bus and two people stood without getting off.

The bus driver described the guy in the story who worked up the courage to ask the girl out on a date as a harasser, without hearing a word from him or asking to hear his side of the story before pulling him away by force. Without any frame of reference about what happened, he was left to assume that the male - who was actively trying to console the girl - was some sort of criminal. This is the power of crying around others.

You're probably already aware that, in most media where there's a struggle between good and evil, the "good guys" and "bad guys" are often clearly defined. You're likely also familiar with most stories - whether in national headlines or gossip that's been heard from a friend - being told in such a way that plainly define one side as good and another as bad, even if it means exaggerating some traits and downplaying others. When you account for this lifelong over-saturation of ludicrously black-and-white scenarios, not to mention an innate need to rationalize things we don't understand, it's no wonder bystanders automatically assumed the boy who asked her out on a date had bad intentions.

Next to a damsel in distress, people need to see a mustache-twirling villain to make sense of it. Seeing the boy as a human being who was only trying to follow his counselor's advice would be too out-of-the-ordinary for most people to reconcile next to a crying girl, and require minutes worth of gathering evidence and fact-checking - and why do that when you can have an instant, angry, emotional reaction instead, followed by supporting someone else and telling them that everything will be okay? And in their minds, there's their good deed for the day, even if they'll never know whether it truly was good or not, by their own definition of the word.

And now we're back to telling someone "no." When doing so, make it clear that you do not want to have sex with them or have any sort of relationship, friendship, or any physical contact with them, if you feel that way. Doing this in no uncertain terms is enough to make any reasonable person back off - like a shy person who's working on their self-esteem, or an inexperienced person who's trying to work on their social skills - and demanding that they leave you alone has got to be the easiest possible way to distinguish a wallflower from a potential attacker. It would be unethical to choose not to take this simple step, jump to the conclusion that they have bad intentions, and have a devastating impact on a person's development as a result.

Be completely sure that this person doesn't misunderstand you and think you're interested. In the first story, mentioning having a boyfriend would have been enough to deter a sensible person. Even if you don't have a significant other, mentioning having one is a good idea if you feel threatened or suspicious in a situation like this. (It's a shame that saying this only drives away the good people, not the bad ones. But this, in itself, can be used to determine how to act and react toward them.)

Examples of firm, honest statements you can reply with are:

"I don't know you [at all/very well], and I don't feel comfortable doing that with a stranger."
"I understand that we've known each other for awhile now, but this has nothing to do with how long we've been friends. I'm just not interested in that."
"Please leave me alone."
"The phrase 'no means no' exists for a reason. Please respect that and stop asking to touch me."
"I've said 'no' several times now. How can you expect me to do what you want when you clearly have no respect for me, my boundaries, or my wishes?"
"I've said 'no' several times. Do you not understand how rude you're being right now by asking yet again?"
"If your mother was here, do you think she'd be proud of how demanding you're being about touching my body?"
"Look, I've been saying 'no' about this for awhile now and you clearly haven't been listening to me. You need to stop. Now."
"If you don't stop acting like a creep, I'll scream."

The biggest argument against speaking up that I've seen is, "I don't want to [come off as rude], so I don't know what to do in this situation." Most of the above the sentences are already polite in any variations of those situations, but if you really want to cover your bases, consider appending the following phrases to parts of the ones above, to make them more polite:

"I'm flattered that this is so important to you, but"
"No, thanks."
"I understand how you feel and I respect your feelings, but"

If they won't stop asking for or trying to make physical contact with you and, as a reminder, if they know who you are - for example, you sometimes interact at school, work, or anywhere else - you should cut off contact with them as best you can. At the same time, let as many people as possible know that they're not taking "no" for an answer. If there's one thing that makes people feel outraged, it's sexual misconduct, and if you're on the receiving end of it, speaking up about it with people you can trust is always the best course of action.

Continued in part two.