Auntie SparkNotes: My Friend Is Looking at Me in a Sexual Way

Hello Auntie!

To be quite honest, I’m having boy trouble, but not in the way that comes off. I have a guy friend who was going through a tough time, and after a few incidents that I’d rather not get into, we sort of stopped talking. Before then, he had asked me out three times, and I had politely turned him down each time because A) Dating isn’t smiled upon in my culture, and B) I made a promise to my mother at the beginning of the school year that I wouldn’t date. This friend, (lets call him N) is a writer, and I have access to his book on Google docs. In the chat, he and one of his friends were talking about me, particularly about how he couldn’t stop staring at my breasts.

Now Auntie, I don’t have many tight-fitting clothes- In fact, most of them are either a size too big or hand me downs from a teenager who stopped wearing the shirts in question. N knows that I am extremely uncomfortable with people looking at my body (i’ve had uncomfortable experiences with that as well previously) and now I am extremely unsure how to act. It’s made me a lot more self conscious about what I wear, and I honestly hate having to think about that in the mornings when I pick an outfit. How do I tell N that I’d like him to stop looking at me in a sexual way, and make clear that I am NOT interested without being rude?

Let’s start with the good news, Sparkler. Everything you want to say can be communicated in a single sentence—and maybe even in a single breath, if you hyperventilate a little! Here’s how:

“I’m not trying to be cruel, but I need you to understand that I don’t like you romantically—and it would be best for both of us if you stop thinking of me that way.”

The bad news is, I’m afraid this won’t accomplish what you’d like it to. Not that you shouldn’t still say it, because you should, if only for the sake of actually telling the truth (i.e. that your reluctance to date isn’t about cultural norms or mom promises, but rather about your interest, or lack thereof.) But not even the most straightforward and politely-worded request is going to have any direct, discernible effect on how this guy thinks about you.

For alas, mind control is not real.

And I know that’s an uncomfortable thing to confront, when you happen to know that someone is thinking thoughts about you that you’d prefer not to be thunk. (Although some people might point out that if you weren’t prepared to learn this sort of potentially-discomfiting information about how you look through someone else’s eyes, you perhaps should not have gone snooping through his chat logs with people who aren’t you. Not that we would point that out, of course. Just saying, some people would.)

What you can do about it, however, is limited to… well, what you can do about it. You don’t want your friend to look at you, i.e. think about you, in a sexual way, and that’s understandable; after all, nobody likes the idea of starring in the masturbatory fantasies of someone they don’t like that way. But the private, unspoken feelings of a person observing your body are not a thing you can control. In truth, it’s not even necessarily something he can control. Attraction isn’t something a person can just turn off; the most your friend can do is struggle with it, and then only if he chooses to. So if you can’t bear the idea that your friend might be noticing or admiring your body when you’re together, your only real option is to remove your body from his view.

Or in other words, maybe it’s time for you to call it quits on this friendship—which, for what it’s worth, doesn’t seem like it’s all that rewarding to you anyway.

Beyond that, though, I would also gently suggest that you recognize how fruitless and useless it is to choose your actions, or your outfits, based on what you do or don’t want some other person to think. I say this with the utmost sympathy, darling: It will make absolutely no difference, except for the part where it makes you crazy. Being seen, being desired, being loathed, being judged, being the star of various weird-ass dramas on the stage of someone else’s subconscious; unless you intend to quit society and live the rest of your days alone in a cave, this is all a fundamental part of the human condition. (And even then, there would probably be some sentient mold on a wall in your underground lair, privately, silently snickering to itself, “Ohmigod, she’s wearing that?!”)

You say you don’t know how to act around this guy, but the point is, you don’t need to act any differently. His feelings aren’t your problem. You just have to be comfortable enough with yourself—with the space you occupy, and with the physical body that occupies it—to move through the world without concern for what you look like inside another person’s head.

Got something to say? Tell us in the comments! And to get advice from Auntie, email her at advice@sparknotes.com.
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