General Etiquette > Life...in general

Awkward fumble drop answer to "I love you" from someone you're not da[color=black]ting[/color]

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WolfWay:
I'm not sure if this belongs in dating because we're not dating, but it's sort of related to intergender relationships. So I'm just going to put it here in "Life in General".

Background:

I have a friend of about 4 years (of the opposite gender, I'm female, he's male) who I have never dated, am not currently dating and not interested in dating ever and am not in love with. Two of my female friends have dated him. If you want to go find the "Paranoid roommate" thread, he's Bob of the Bob & Sally debacle.

I like him as a friend, he is a very good friend, but I have ZERO interest in ever dating him. We've already had a discussion a while back where he said that he thinks I'm "totally hot" and that he wants to date me but I'm not interested in him like that (I told him that, flat out plainly). Now every time he gets overly friendly or starts complimenting me I get really uncomfortable.  I don't flirt with him, I don't encourage him, I don't lead him on. I also don't want to hurt his feelings, but it seems like he keeps setting himself up for hurt feelings.

We used to share a flat and once when our burglar alarm went off in the middle of the night he commented the next day that he was glad it did because he got to see me in my short nighty and I have nice legs. I flat out shut him down and asked him not to say things like that. He has avoided saying blantant things like that since but it's more subtle stuff now that can be written off as things friends say to one another.

/end background

I posted a status to my face book page today ("Today tell someone you love them because life is short. But shout it at them in German because life is also confusing and terrifying").  ;D

He took this as a queue to tell me via private IM chat "I love you".  If it were from one of my gay male friends or female friends, I wouldn't have had a problem replying in kind, because it isn't a loaded phrase with them. But with him it makes me profoundly awkward because I'm paranoid that any sort of positive response (like "Aw, that's so sweet!" or "Thank you!" would be encouraging things I don't want to encourage) and I not sure there's any polite way to respond to that without hurting his feelings. I did manage to redirect by referring back to the original joke he was referencing ("You're supposed to bellow it dude, caps lock is cruise control for the internet! =) " and the discussion turned a bit jokey after that).

Short short question:
What the heck do I say to a good friend  saying "I love you" to me when I don't return the feelings and don't want to encourage him?

I need some sort of gentle disengage tactics and I was hoping you wise folks might have some more gentle methods than my own clumsy redirect attempts. I keep getting blindsided by these things and I don't want to hurt his feelings but everything I come up with is utterly awkward and clumsy so far.  :(

dearabby:
I think your response was perfect. Turning it into a joke is the best way to relieve the tension. You've already told him he has zero chance, so there's no need to explicitly say it again.

TootsNYC:
I don't think you need to worry overly about hurting his feelings beyond refraining from being mean. If he feels *rejected*, that's simply what he gets.

So in a different situation (I think your response in this situation is great), you can speak the truth to him--you can say, "I like you" or "You're a great friend."

But I also might find ways to completely cool it with him, and pull WAY back. Just because, well, it's uncomfortable.

MacadamiaNut:
Are you me, OP?  You have described a very similar situation I am in.  Thank you for saving me a long post!  I do something similar as you do but I also pretend like I didn't even hear what he said.  So when he says, "You're so pretty." I say, "You wanna get another beer?"  But when he says "I love you" it's more awkward because I do return this sentiment to other friends... just not him! If it's in a text, I just ignore.  If it's to my face, I just pretend like I didn't hear it and say something unrelated back... ugh...

Sorry I have no good advice.  Hopefully others will chime in with some good one-liners!

Carotte:
There's the 'friend-zoning' or even 'brother-zoning' tactic, when you don't just imply, you straight out say something like "I like you too, you are like a brother to me" or some variation of it..

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