“Decline that request with some tact”

If you’re spending a lot of time on online sites for hookups and casual flings, it’s possible that you might receive a message from someone that you just don’t want anything to do with. Maybe she’s not your type physically, or maybe, upon perusing her profile, she seems like the opposite of a person you would ever be able to get along with. Either way, if you get a message from her saying that she’d like to get to know you better so you can maybe move to hooking up and you want to decline it, there’s a certain set of rules and etiquette to follow. You shouldn’t be too rude, but you also shouldn’t be too nice. If she’s someone that you know you absolutely wouldn’t want anything to do with, there’s no reason to sugar-coat it and make her think that you’re declining it for the time being but there might be a hope of it in the future.

Make Sure to Respond

“Let her know that you are not interested”

Many men who receive messages form women that they don’t want to pursue a hookup will choose to simply ignore it. That’s certainly an option you have available to you. However there are a few issues with simply ignoring a message. First of all, ignoring a message will make her send you even more repetitive messages. Also, every dating website out there has quite a few scam profiles on them. They serve to make the website seem more plausible by making it full of such profiles. However, every site wants you to think that the profiles aren’t scams. To enable this, they allow a “report spam” or “report inactive profile” option, which you can click. If a woman sends you repetitive messages and you just ignore them, she might start to think the profile isn’t real and then she’ll report it, therefore getting your profile shut down. There are ways around this, of course – creating another profile or simply resuming your old one, but it’s a nuisance when it could be avoided. You should always respond to a message even if you’re not interested.

Keep It Brief but Clear

When responding to the message, you don’t have to send a long paragraph explaining all your reasons for declining the offer. It can be something as simple as a “Thanks for the message, but no thanks,” or “I’m not interested, thank you.” As long as you get your point across clearly, the message can be as short as you want. Though, we do recommend sending a little more than just “NO.” That seems more than a little rude, don’t you think?

Avoid the messages like “I don’t really think we’d be compatible for something like this…” because it indicates indecisiveness and tells her that you’re not quite sure if you really want to decline the offer or not. With a weak, watered-down message like that, she might continue to message you if she had her heart set on getting with you, and you don’t want to deal with that when there are other women out there that you’d rather spend your time on.