Your first response seems fine to me. I’m generally not very good at picking up on subtle signals, but saying “I’m not interested, let’s be friends” or any variation thereof is as clear as day from any perspective I can successfully empathize with (which I know says more about me than about the workings of other humans). Certainly, I strongly oppose the notion (which I’ve seen several times in different contexts) that your statement was “too gentle”. Sure, your statement was gentle—and that’s great! You weren’t trying to be harsh, and you wanted to be friends, so your tone actually matched your intention in this case. The force with which a statement is delivered cannot override it’s content even had they not matched up, or were not understood to match up by the recipient. Just because you gave a nice “no” does not make that “no” any less important. Your response was sufficient to make your intention clear to a fairly strict standard, and the fact that it was ignored does not change that. I really don’t want to live in a world where everyone feels like they have to act less nice than they want to just to get their meaning across, and especially not in a world where you skip to the “damaging friendship” response. I am aware that a harsher response may tend to get you listened to more often, but that’s not universal and may come at a cost.
Your first response seems fine to me. I’m generally not very good at picking up on subtle signals, but saying “I’m not interested, let’s be friends” or any variation thereof is as clear as day from any perspective I can successfully empathize with (which I know says more about me than about the workings of other humans). Certainly, I strongly oppose the notion (which I’ve seen several times in different contexts) that your statement was “too gentle”. Sure, your statement was gentle—and that’s great! You weren’t trying to be harsh, and you wanted to be friends, so your tone actually matched your intention in this case. The force with which a statement is delivered cannot override it’s content even had they not matched up, or were not understood to match up by the recipient. Just because you gave a nice “no” does not make that “no” any less important. Your response was sufficient to make your intention clear to a fairly strict standard, and the fact that it was ignored does not change that. I really don’t want to live in a world where everyone feels like they have to act less nice than they want to just to get their meaning across, and especially not in a world where you skip to the “damaging friendship” response. I am aware that a harsher response may tend to get you listened to more often, but that’s not universal and may come at a cost.