Politely reject/ friend someone

The only words of wisdom I have is that your language is going to be unambiguous and not soft peddled. You van't say something like "You'te a nice person, but..." because they are going to tune out to everything after the but.

 

I wonder, are you responding to all of the text messages? If not, I would politely but firmly explain that you don't wish to receive lots of text messages. Bear in mind, it's not what we say but how we say it that counts. Quite frankly, I'd be annoyed if anyone was bombarding me with texts and would feel obliged to address the issue with them

I do think it's more important to address the issue of annoyance than make up a lie about having a date. There is no guarantee that a lie will stop the texting. If they have in fact accepted that it's friends only, you telling them about a date might lead to more texts about the when/where/how.

 

There's nothing wrong per se with blocking them at this point. They're violating social norms of interacting and not picking up on you saying you're not interested and busy. You don't actually owe them anything (especially since you haven't been in a relationship with them, been friends, seen them at all IRL) but the kind thing to do here is to firmly set the boundary as others above have suggested.

 

If they're unable or unwilling to be respectful, I think blocking is right course of action.

 

At this point it seems like blocking may be your best option.

If they've continually ignored your requests to back off it doesn't seem like that is going to change.

 

Hi there,

I am curious to know what your real risk is by being up front and honest with the person about your expectations of engagement before proceeding with blocking. Have you shared personally identifiable information on any networks that could make the person know where you precisely live or work ect.

I know you might think that you're doing the nice thing by being more polite and not wanting to be frank about your expectations and interest level, but also consider that a lot of communication can be lost in text messages. You don't really know where the other person is coming from or if the other person is interpreting a missed signal. They might be lonely and never get told the truth from people about their conduct, or maybe there is a loose screw in their brain, who knows. Without being clear early and often about where you stand, it can be kind of hurtful to have connections with a vaguely open ended status that leads to a block. The longer that connection is vague, the more difficult the situation becomes.

When you say to this person you want to be friends ect, what does that look like for you? Your expectations of what a friend is might be different than theirs, or maybe you don't actually want to be friends. Clarifying that expectation may solve the issue.

This is just food for thought, and maybe if you don't do this with this person, think about approaching life this way in the future. As a rule of thumb, I think you owe it to the people you attempt to connect with, and also to yourself, to set clear expectations and boundaries early and often. Communicating with people in ways where you're trying to get them to read between the lines can lead to communication gaps, wasted time, and unnecessary hardship for both parties. The need to be frank and clear is more apparent in text.

When expectations and boundaries are not clear to people, I find they will often act in ways that aren't ideal, but they may not know better. Typically this requires a difficult conversation, which can be hard to have when you aren't used to doing so, but there's a lot of resources online for having effective difficult conversations. The more you do them, the more comfortable you'll become, and the more fulfilled you will be in making good connections and developing deeper relationships with others.

The other part about conducting your life in this way is that when those boundaries are abundantly clear and people continue to violate them, you are in a better position to block contact with a clear conscience, knowing you did everything on your end to reach out for open, mature, and mutually beneficial connection. That total block of contact then becomes justified from a position of self-respect and an understanding that the other person may be sick or unable to develop healthy connections for whatever reason. At that point you know you have gave that person the opportunity to conduct themselves in a mature healthy way, and their lack of ability to rise to the occasion is entirely their issue to figure out, and not yours to take on or apologize for.

All the best