I had a rough interaction today that really showed me how much I need to fix this within myself, since I think I’m in the “freeze” category of fight/flight/freeze. The actual situation is written out below if you feel like context matters, but I’m not entirely sure it does. The moral is that I was hesitant in reacting to protect my fiance from potential harm when one of our good friends reacted immediately. I was able to get my bearings and support properly after he inserted himself, but it feels so shitty for my fiance and myself that this played out the way it did, and I want to get better at being decisive in these kinds of situations. I’ve never been in a fight or even had to deal with aggressive verbal altercations, so my ability to react to this kind of stuff just doesn’t exist. Some kind of self-defense or martial art classes naturally come to mind, but I wanted to see if anyone out there happened to have their own feedback or had gone through something similar. Appreciate any and all input. As for the actual details if you want them: I was with my fiancé and a couple friends at an ice cream shop today, hanging out on their sidewalk patio area. While we were hanging out, a man is walking down the street towards us yelling at no one in particular (probably an episode of some sort), and as he’s passing by us, he immediately got us on my fiance and started accusing her of supporting someone or something. It made no sense, is the point. He got in her space pretty quickly, and she told him twice to get away from her, and when he didn’t, she pushed him. He started acting like he was gearing up for a fight after that, so one of our friends got up first to properly step between him and my fiancé, and he backed up a little after that, still shouting angry nonsense at us. He then proceeded to throw something at my fiancé (turned out to be a wallet with his ID in it, so we had that for the police after the fact), after which she and our other friends moved back into the ice cream shop, and I stayed out to support our friend who was the initial blocker. I remember saying something to him like “What are you doing?” or something along those lines. Something neutral. Otherwise it was just a bit of angry name-calling from him before he did a “you’re not worth it” eye roll and ran across the street and away. So, aside from the push, no actual physical contact. The whole situation was itself a bit bizarre, but more than anything, I’m deeply disappointed I didn’t have the wherewithal to step up and defend my own fiancé first. There’s a nonzero amount of grace in that the friend has had significantly more “crisis mode” response practice than me, and I was genuinely impressed with how well and generally stoically he handled it, but it still felt bad, and I want to change that about myself and I wasn’t sure how. submitted by /u/Sand_Coffin
Originally posted by u/Sand_Coffin on r/AskMen
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