“Sorry I have a boyfriend” is of course a time-tested and reasonably reliable no-fault rejection strategy. But what many tacticians may not realize is it has an even more powerful counterpart, the preemptive boyfriend name-drop. This is when a conversation with a stranger veers into high-alert territory and you make up a guy named Raphael (my boyfriend) who you mention due to his extremely-relevant interest in the current topic of conversation.
Raphael is a powerful tactical piece here due to his simultaneous love or hatred of every single topic ever, due to he’s not real.