I've been getting some unwanted attention from a friend of a friend. I've made it very clear to him that I am in a relationship and not interested. I tried to block him but he found a way to contact me and was crying on voice notes saying he just wanted to be my friend and that was very cruel for blocking him.
I tried to keep the conversation friendly but he kept crossing the line into sex talk or romantic talk. I started ignoring him instead, just not replying to any messages at all. I've been leaving his messages either unread or on read. I had to change my profile photo the other day and he immediately sent me a voice note saying how much he loved my photo and he was thinking about me a lot, all very affectionate. He said he'd have to forgive him if he decided to message me more 'in the run up to the big days' 🙄
Should I just keep ignoring and hoping he will get the message and move on? (It's been a couple of months already since I started ignoring him). Or shall I send a message reinforcing that I'm not interested / ask him to stop messaging me ?
I'm not interested in being friends with him but Blocking him is not an option because of how strongly he reacted last time and he is a friend of a friend. I know he will try and contact me via other means, or via our shared contacts, and he'll be almost hysterical, and I really really really don't want to deal with that.
Please don't just reply and say I should block as it's not an option. I'd like to know if you would continue to ignore him, or whether you'd say something, and if so, what?