The Naked Truth | How to reject unwanted sexual advances, touching and overfriendly behaviour and keep healthy boundaries

It can feel quite awkward when someone you aren’t interested in shows an interest in you, and worse still if they go on to make unwanted advances or ignore your hints of rejection.

However, some people unknowingly make unwanted romantic advances when they misread certain gestures as encouraging signals.

The line between courtship and uncomfortable romantic advances is not always clear. When carried out persistently, those unwanted advances could be interpreted as a form of sexual harassment.

Sometimes what one suitor sees as romantic pursuit may be an irritation to their uninterested love target. Often a suitor could misinterpret an innocent gesture of friendship as being an encouragement for them to continue their pursuit. In reality, it is often awkward for the target of the unwanted advances to say “no”, especially if both parties know each other on a professional level or if they have mutual friends.

As a result, a reluctance to say “no” is often perceived as a form of invitation, acceptance or even genuine romantic interest. This can perpetuate into a cycle of increasingly unwanted advances, uncomfortable interactions, uneasiness and subtle evasion. In some cases, people who make unsolicited romantic or even sexual advances feel a sense of entitlement.

In normal situations one would assume the target would explicitly reject these advances, stamping any such move out at the start. But in reality, there are many reasons that they cannot react so decisively. A person may be concerned about repercussions, especially if they know the initiator professionally or socially. And sometimes advances can be so ambiguous that they appear, on the surface, as over-friendliness.