My best friend met a guy at my birthday party, which I held with a guy friend of mine who had brought some of his Uni friends along and that guy was one of them. He was nice at first and texted me the next day to ask if I could give him my best friends number. She was fine with it so I did. They started texting and ended up going to a concert together since my friend wanted to go but didn’t know anyone else who liked the band except this guy. He slept over at her place and told her he liked her, but she didn’t like him back, so she told him in the most kind way possible that she thought he was a great guy, but that she just did not see him that way and she saw him as a friend but not more.

Over the course of the next few months he increasingly spammed her with text messages to a point where she was completely overwhelmed and stressed and he did that even after she had told him several times to stop texting her as much and that she was not interested.

Unfortunately, she had agreed to go to another concert with him right after the first one and they had already bought the tickets and she felt like it would be “mean” if she cancelled on him now. Fast forward another few months and I am visitin her for a long weekend which happens to be the weekend the concert with the guy is. He asked her if he could sleep over after the concert and since *again* she felt like it would be “mean” to say no and he lived a long way from the location she said yes. He then proceeds to not text her about any of the logistics and whether he needs to bring anything (this is important later) and shows up unnecessarily 3 hours before the concert starts. We meet him together at a restaurant and have dinner with him and he is already pissed that I am there even though my friend had told him I was visiting her and I was even so nice as to offer to take his stuff home with me so that he didnt have to take it to the concert. After they return he awkardly stands in the hallway between the guest bedroom and my friends bedroom and my friend asks him if he needs anything. Turns out he hadn’t brought a sleeping bag or anything like that and that while not knowing my friend had a guest room. So that dude basically assumed he would obviously just hook up with my friend and sleep in their bed with them and that after her telling him no 200 times! She was super relieved I was there because he kept asking if she was sure she did not want to sleep in the guest room with him -.-

The next day he reveals that his parents would be able to pick him up on the next day because they would return from their vacation and he asks if it would be ok if he stayed another night……My friend is now pissed, but still too nice to say no. However, we had plans for the weekend to go hiking and that is *our* thing. So when he asked if he could come we said no -with all due respect, you did not mention you wanted to stay longer and this is the one weekend we can see eachother so we had planned stuff. He is angry about it, but oh well we leave for the day. In the evening we make dinner with all her roommates, he does not lift a finger. Before we go to bed he again corners my friend and asks her if she is very sure she does not want to sleep over in his room and presses on like he has some sort of right to it. She of course doesnt.

The next day he leaves in the morning and then texts her that he felt like we treated him poorly and it was not cool that i was there blablabla. My friend tells him our point of view, that he disrupted our planned weekend, that it was only planned that he stayed for one night and that he was rude and overstepped etc. A day later he writes an endless apology to her and texts me basically sorry i came across as rude. We dont reply and he still kept texting her as if nothing had happened and everything was fine.

Two months into that behaviour I finally convinced my friend to block his number. Again she felt like it would be *mean* to do that. But after I pointed out that he very clearly did not respect the boundaries she set and that he would probably keep doing this she realized there probably was no way around it and finally blocked him. She feels so much better now!

Even though no non-consensual touching happened here, it is very disturbing to see a young man, who seems perfectly nice and liberal and even feminist at first glance, in our own extended friendship circle, displaying this sort of not taking no for an answer behaviour and constantly overstepping boundary after boundary. It really showed me that that attitude of “when women say no, they actually mean yes” is still very much alive and thriving today. in addition to that, after I told the friend I had my birthday party with about that guys behaviour he just kind of laughed it off and said yeah that guy just is a bit weird sometimes… Excuse me?!