That’s fair. As a socially anxious guy, I probably would go for the “If you want” and/or “If you can’t/don’t want to that’s ok” route.
I wouldn’t necessarily say that the person on the left in the picture is aware the advance is unwanted, though. Of course, it’s an AI picture, that guy does not exist, but speaking of a hypothetical person with even worse social anxiety than even myself, I could see one like that using “Sorry”. Not because he knows that the advance is unwanted (though it could be that he knows, it just depends by case), but because he assumes any advances from him will be unwanted. Getting rejected every single time would make it hard to assume “Ok but surely next time will be ok”, and so you would operate, from the start, under the assumption that the other person doesn’t want to talk to you.
I don’t know if my point is coming across too well, but basically what I’m trying to say is this: Once you get to the point where you think every single interaction coming from you is unwanted (which is probably false. Even if most are, it’s highly unlikely all are), then you kinda stop differentiating between when someone actually doesn’t want to talk to you, and when you’re overthinking but you’re actually incorrect. So if the guy would stop trying to interact with people he thinks don’t want to talk to him, he’d essentially stop trying to interact period.
That’s fair. As a socially anxious guy, I probably would go for the “If you want” and/or “If you can’t/don’t want to that’s ok” route.
I wouldn’t necessarily say that the person on the left in the picture is aware the advance is unwanted, though. Of course, it’s an AI picture, that guy does not exist, but speaking of a hypothetical person with even worse social anxiety than even myself, I could see one like that using “Sorry”. Not because he knows that the advance is unwanted (though it could be that he knows, it just depends by case), but because he assumes any advances from him will be unwanted. Getting rejected every single time would make it hard to assume “Ok but surely next time will be ok”, and so you would operate, from the start, under the assumption that the other person doesn’t want to talk to you.
I don’t know if my point is coming across too well, but basically what I’m trying to say is this: Once you get to the point where you think every single interaction coming from you is unwanted (which is probably false. Even if most are, it’s highly unlikely all are), then you kinda stop differentiating between when someone actually doesn’t want to talk to you, and when you’re overthinking but you’re actually incorrect. So if the guy would stop trying to interact with people he thinks don’t want to talk to him, he’d essentially stop trying to interact period.