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Hello! 

Kind of awkward question. I don’t really have anyone to talk to about this because it’s centered around my friend group. I’m 25 years old, and happily single. I’m not going to go too in depth, but I’m just not looking for a romantic relationship right now due to various factors. But my friends who know this, keep trying to set me up with guys that I have no romantic interest in whatsoever. Oftentimes these are guys I am solely friends with, and I’m not looking for anything more than that.

I start feeling incredibly awkward around these guys because I know that my friends are trying to set me up with them (i.e: When I’m hanging with my friend group they’ll ask me what I think about this guy, if he’s single, etc). Its really weird to me that they’re almost forcing me to be in a relationship when I have verbally expressed that I am not interested. I’m kind of at a lost and I think most of this is due to societal norms forcing romantic relationships. Advice?

My first suggestion is to remind yourself that nobody can force you to actually date any of these people. You can say “no thanks” and “I’m not interested” forever and never go on a single date with any of them. The beauty of having a strong internal boundary is that you get to win this argument forever.

My second suggestion is to have an honest-to-god argument about this. The quickest way to do that is to interrupt the next session of “What do you think of Paulathan? Is he not man-shaped? Howabout Jeffopher? Are his burly forearms not pleasing? And Zebedekiel? Do his crops not flourish?” matchmaking with a question of your own: “I’ve told you I’m not interested in dating anyone right now, but you insist on pushing every one of my male friends at me anyway. Why?”

Then wait. Do not fill the silence. Let it get real awkward and do not let it go until they tell you why. Let them have a taste of their own relentlessness for a change. From their justifications, you will be able to tease out whether it’s that they don’t believe you about what you want or that they don’t care about what you want for reasons of their own.(Hint: Both are bad.)

I predict that during whatever follows you will hear something like “We just want you to be happy” and “We just think you and [Insert Man Here] would be really good together” at least once. Bonus points for “We just want to help.”

A potential answer to “We just want you to be happy”  is “Great! Being pressured to date people or constantly speculate about which one of my friends you feel I should date is making me annoyed and unhappy. What would make me happy is for you to believe the words I say about what I want for my own life and drop the topic of my love life unless I bring it up.”

A potential answer to “We just think you and ________ would be really good together” is “That might almost be compelling if you didn’t do the same thing with literally every man I’m friends with. Anyway, please stop. I like all my friends, or else we wouldn’t be friends. Friendships aren’t placeholders or dry runs for romantic relationships. My life is not fanfiction, and it’s creepy to continuously ‘ship me with every dude we know.”

“We just want to help” = “Is that so? I don’t recall asking for help, and I do recall multiple conversations where I’ve told you I’m not interested in dating right now and to leave me alone about it. If you want to help me, then STOP. Stop trying to push me at my friends. Stop commenting on and speculating about my romantic life. Stop treating me like a project. In fact, raise your pinky, look me in the eye, and promise me that you will stop trying to ‘help’ me with anything unless I ask you for help. Which means, unless you hear the words ‘Friendname, I would love your help with sorting out my dating life,’ this topic is off limits. Forever. Understood?”

My third suggestion is that 100% okay if you raise your voice and display visible anger during this argument, especially if they keep trying to argue with you once you’ve spelled out your boundary. This is not a new problem and they already know that you don’t like it. Once it gets like that, it’s no longer a communication problem, it’s a consent problem, and you don’t owe people politeness or gentle persuasion about matters of your consent. I keep saying this, because it keeps being true: Chronically pushy people are making a bet that pressuring you is the easiest and cheapest path to getting what they want. Society enforces a lot of rules about politeness and decorum and who is allowed to lose their shit and who is expected to let the shit roll downhill onto them that stacks the deck profoundly in the favor of coercion. You can’t control people’s initial mistaken assumptions, but you absolutely can make them lose that bet. You can stop awkwardly laughing and minimizing what’s happening, stop smoothing stuff over, stop letting people get away with “just joking,” and stop being the reasonable one who tries to be the bigger person. If these people have never seen what it’s like when you are furious at them, maybe it’s time they did. “YEP, I AM 100% UNREASONABLE ABOUT THIS. KNOCK. IT. OFF.”

After the initial argument where you have it all out, my fourth suggestion is to be boring, consistent, and frankly, dismissive. First strike: “What do I think of Saxmillian? For you? Sure, go for it! For me? I thought we agreed you would stop being weird about this.” Second strike: “Fucking yikes.” Third strike: GO HOME. No more explaining, arguing, justifying. The more you try to negotiate, the more you indicate that the topic is up for negotiation.

PSA: People who are willing to override your consent to pressure you into being involved with a man (any man) will be equally dismissive about your consent in other matters. At best, these “friends” will bore the shit out of you. At worst, they will put you in situations that are actively unsafe.

If they are single and obsessed with being partnered, these are the friends who will do stuff like leave you at the bar with randoms you don’t know so they can go off with some guy, even though they were supposed to be your ride home. They will cancel plans with you last minute because a dude who ghosted them last month suddenly popped up again. They will turn fun 1:1 plans with you into you watching them be on a date with whatever dude they brought along last minute, or worse, it will be an awkward double-date when the dude brings along a friend “for you.” If dudes are not present by some miracle, trust that you will spend the time listening to them moon over or complain about dudes.They will disappear whenever they are happily coupled and reappear whenever they need you to comfort them through their latest breakup.

If you do start dating someone down the road and experience problems, these are the friends who will encourage you to ignore and to persist in the relationship at all costs despite your unhappiness because they care more about being right (or the concept of love) than they do about what you want. “Relationships take work!” “Nobody’s perfect!” “Everybody settles a little bit!” “Do you want to be alone forever?” Bonus: You can look forward to whatever shithead they are partnered with ruining every fun occasion for the rest of time as they minimize and excuse his bad behavior and the behavior of whatever shithead friends he brings to the relationship.These friends will minimize and justify a constant barrage of misogyny, racism, atrocious political views, casual bullying, and other glaring signs that someone is a bad person because “it’s just a joke” and “love conquers all.”

The last time I was friends with a person who saw me and my singleness as a project she needed to remedy, I was 19 years old. We were on a co-ed camping trip with friends where we were the only girls and I was supposed to be sharing a tent with her, but she decided to hook up with one of the four dudes in the group. In our tent. Which contained my sleeping bag and all my stuff. Without warning me.

I thought it was a last minute oversight fueled by alcohol until one of the guys approached me by the campfire and sheepishly told me my friend had told him I liked him and arranged for me to stay in his tent earlier in the day because she wanted to be a good wing-woman. In fact, she’d moved my sleeping bag and backpack to his tent already. The only reason that this isn’t a much worse story is that he and the other guys along on the trip weren’t creeps. He’d realized I was picking up on none of his “signals” throughout the day (to be fair, I might have failed at flirting even harder if I had been interested) and figured that my friend was either badly mistaken or up to something and he should assume nothing without actually talking to me. It’s hard to have a “I mean, I totally would…but only if you also totally would” conversation when you’re also dying of embarrassment, so props to him and to being 19 and living in hope. I was too mad at her at that point to even contemplate his offer, and the second I indicated that he backed off completely

He and another guy ended up pushing down the back seat in his hatchback to make a little nest for me where I could sleep comfortably alone, and he gave me the keys so I could lock the doors from the inside. Then they both walked me to and from the campground latrines and tucked me in with a bottle of water and somebody’s extra pillow.

She and I never really had it out about that weekend and how her obsession with pairing off put me in danger. I wasn’t good at confrontation back then, especially not when it meant interrupting her raves about Mr. Wonderful and their new relationship. I hung back, felt angry, and I looked at our whole friendship in a new light. I noticed how the only thing she ever wanted to talk about was men, and how boring and repetitive it was. I noticed that whenever I walked with her to class or ate lunch with her, any time a guy came near us, she would turn her attention to them and become almost different person with big eyes and a higher voice and a tinkling laugh and a sudden performative ignorance of anything serious, even if we’d been talking about world events just seconds before. It was like I wasn’t even there anymore. I started timing how long it took for her to say anything to me or even look at me once a man was around. And then I started drifting away during those episodes and seeing if she noticed. She never did, and I eventually drifted into different friendships. I hope she got what she wanted. I got what I needed, which was a  lifelong allergy to friendships with people who treat me like an accessory or a convenient vessel for their own hopes and dreams.

This is why my fifth and final suggestion is to clock which friends believe you enough to change their behavior, as well as any friends who never made this a problem in the first place, and prioritize hanging out with people who do not center romantic relationships in general and romantic relationships with men in particular. If that means seeking out new friendships, do it. You will be both safer and happier in the long run.

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