AndyPandy

It's not uncommon for people to rent that stuff or pay for it via instalments in order to project an image of affluence - especially when they're trying to lure others in to whatever their agenda is. Be blunt and say something along the lines of "Thanks but I'm not interested in those events - but I'm definitely interested in you" and gauge her reaction.

There have been situations where I've been attracted to and dated women who are considerably older than me because I enjoyed their company and liked them for who they are in terms of personality, intellect, interests/hobbies and also their looks. It happened over the weekend when I got talking at random to a lady about satire, politics, volunteering and current affairs. However, as others have already determined, this man is a creepy slimeball who has no interest in dating or anything romantic and is just looking for his latest victim/conquest. Referring to hanging out with you (as he describes it) in the context of you being an "older woman" indicates that he sees you as a fetishised sex object and not as a human being. Worryingly, that's probably the tip of the iceberg regarding his sleaziness and unprofessionalism. The fact that he continued to touch your shoulder after you made it clear that you do not want physical contact from a complete stranger is a huge red flag and indicative that if a woman says "no" or "stop" he'll simply ignore them and do as he pleases. I agree with the other posters that he needs to be blacklisted/reported somehow because he probably does this as a routine and sexual harassment is unacceptable.

In the past I very likely would have adopted a low profile under such circumstances but those days are over. I refuse to be an exile, a recluse or a hermit when I'm the one whose done nothing wrong. Thanks. 🙂 Self-awareness and self-reflection are not her forte. Remember, this is someone who was angry at me for taking offence at the disrespectful behaviour of her family and who accused me of causing her stress because I objected to their actions. I certainly intend to. It took me by surprise that she even said hello and goodbye, albeit with passive aggressiveness. Definitely! In the weeks that have passed since my original post, I'm in a much happier and healthier place. There's no bitterness or anger, merely reflections on what a dreadful situation that was and the absolute relief that she and her horrible family are no longer part of my life. You've all been a great help and I'll be sticking around to extend that positive karma to others. 🙂

Indeed - and people who are toxic and abusive work to blind us to our self-worth and the fact that plenty of other people exist in the world who will recognise our worth and treat us accordingly. They get off on making other people feel unhappy and worthless - and they derive pleasure and satisfaction at the knowledge that they're denying you the opportunity to find someone who would appreciate you. This is exactly what I'm experiencing right now after recently escaping from a toxic and abusive situation. The relief that sweeps throughout your soul as you begin to heal and detox is incredible and you end up wondering what you ever saw in them in the first place and why you endured their BS for so (too) long.

I'll return to the bolded part... This, is not the behaviour of a gentle man (or gentleman). As others have pointed out, these are characteristics of an abuser. Ok he doesn't hit you but shoving and pushing are still forms of violence and mistreatment and it could escalate to kicks, slaps and punches once he's determined how far he can go with abusing you. Abusers have nice moments - that's how they're able to maintain control over their victims by alternating between kindness and unkindness - which creates confusion and makes the victim think that if the abuser could be purged of their cruelty that they'd be the loveliest person ever. It seldom happens. You're not overreacting. This will not end well - the longer you stay, the further you will become unhappy and find it harder to escape. Spare yourself the agony and find a way to leave and give yourself the opportunity to meet someone who won't treat you like this.

Time for an update... Last night I went to a party and the ex GF turned up. She'd apparently informed the host (a mutual friend) that she couldn't make it but then showed up anyway. Ah well. There was no drama - she said hello in a gruff tone, remained in another room for 40 minutes and when departing, she made a point of coming to bid me farewell - again in a gruff tone and with an air of resentment. I suppose she felt inhibited at causing a scene during someone else's party. The host is aware of the situation and later apologised to me and expressed surprise at her presence given that she'd explicitly stated that she wouldn't be coming. They urged me not to get sucked back into the toxicity via a reconciliation and reiterated that I'm worthy of better treatment. I assured them that there is absolutely no chance of that happening. Another gathering has been arranged for next weekend and several people have insisted that I join them - which is really nice. There's a possibility that the ex GF will be there but I'm not going to miss out on having fun with my friends and the opportunity to make further friends because of her rotten behaviour. 🙂

That's a lovely and thoughtful reply but you tagged me in by mistake! 😉

This, is not love.

Absolutely. I'd be a millionaire if I could monetise the amount of occasions that I was smiled at and thanked for a wonderful time and even informed that we could meet up again and do xyz or hang out at theirs, only to then be ghosted. Internet Dating is particularly rife with this behaviour. Watch what they do - not what they say.

Yes. This has been my experience too. What has been seen, cannot be unseen... They certainly are - and in turn I'll appreciate them all the more for it. Equally, the right woman is bound to appreciate the OP.

Sorry! 🙂 For a long time I maintained that 5'8" is average but through the years, the malicious and silly felt the need to inform me otherwise. Totally agree but spending time within the curious world of Internet Dating reveals a widespread preference for men who are at least 6ft by people who are nowhere near that in their own height on the basis that it means that they get to wear their heels. Ah well. 🤷‍♂️

If she truly likes you then she'll accept you for who you are - regardless of whatever perceived shortcomings you fear will be an issue. By Western standards at 5ft 8" I'm considered short in terms of male height and I've been rejected (and derided) countless times in favour of men who are 6ft plus. However, there have also been numerous women through the years who simply didn't care and liked me nonetheless because they were not shallow or fixated on superficial concerns and saw my worth. The same will apply to you. People who are worthwhile recognise the worth of others and when this doesn't happen, the loss is theirs.

People just don't forget something like that. They've chosen to ignore your wishes as expressed to them in previous interactions and that they'd seemingly registered during those previous interactions. As a man, when a woman tells me "no" or indicates that she doesn't want something intimate to ensue, I respect her wishes and I do as she's asked - and that's supposed to be a basic, universal principle of respect and decency. If a man behaves otherwise, that's a huge red flag and a warning of major problems on the horizon because it means they're capable of disregarding agreements on acceptable behaviour and violating your physical space in favour of their agendas. Which is extremely worrying. The level of entitlement that he possesses to sulk if he doesn't get his own way with physical intimacy suggests that he has a past of coercing and browbeating women into acceding to his sexual demands. That's not a healthy attitude and if I were you, I wouldn't feel safe around him. A past lover told me that she was fine with me initiating lovemaking whilst she was asleep and for obvious reasons I balked at the very idea. She then made a point of emphasising that she gave me her explicit permission to do so but even then I still declined because I felt uneasy at the loaded history surrounding that practice and wanted nothing to do with it.

Why, thank you! 🙂 I encountered similar dynamics of micro-aggressions with my ex's mother. An egregious example is that as soon as she saw me, her first question was to ascertain my nationality and "background" and no matter how many times that it was repeated to her, she refused to accept the simple, truthful answer that I'm not an immigrant - that I was born and raised in the UK - the same as herself and her daughter. It wasn't the answer that she wanted - or believed and instead she demanded to know which country I really belong to - because in her mind it couldn't be the UK. She was more fixated on this insulting line of questioning than even asking me how long I'd known her daughter or how we met - which was something that she never bothered to enquire about. My ex said that I should've taken her mother to task and let her know how uncomfortable she was making me. I was incredulous at having to explain that it's her mother - it would've been extremely awkward for me to do that during the first meeting and that it's her responsibility to intercede on my behalf with her parent, especially as she was literally sat beside her throughout the entire incident. Fingers crossed. I look forward to sharing a nice update on that subject in due course. 🙂 Thank you. I really appreciate the validation.

Indeed, she well and truly showed me exactly what kind of a person she is - and made her lack of regard for me quite clear. She unwittingly did me a great favour. I'm working towards this and I've also gone a step further - I've been attending to activities which had been neglected, in particular my electrical engineering hobby. There's a pile of computers and consoles ranging from 80s and 90s stuff through to the PS4 that I've begun working on. Here's an example... This project is now up and running, which has been extremely rewarding and has channelled my energies into a positive direction rather than dwelling on negative thoughts. I'm hoping to get started on another one later today. A friend has invited me to a party that's coming up in a few weeks and I'll definitely be going. Unfortunately my ex has also been invited and I almost declined when I discovered this but its been pointed out to me that I shouldn't lose access to my social circle because of her and that she might not even turn up and if even she does, I don't even need to talk to her. That abuser and child molester has boasted to her about escaping prosecution for his actions towards her middle daughter but is happily allowed unsupervised access to his 12 year old daughter. The implications of that are extremely troubling but yes, apparently I'm the misogynist who disrespects women and makes them feel uncomfortable. The tirade stopped just short of that. Quite, the utterance of "cancel culture" and equating it with her family having the right to disrespect me helped contribute to my departure from the situation. Ironically she views herself as a progressive. Thanks and I will keep all of these insights in mind whenever I reflect on what transpired. A week on and my overwhelming feeling is relief that I'm free of these toxic people and their toxicity. Rest assured, there will be no reconciliation with her - not ever. You'll never see an update with me explaining that I gave her another chance because she's changed etc. If anything, I'm looking forward to finding and being with someone who likes and respects me. I know she's out there. Fingers crossed that I'll get to share that happy news with you all. 🙂

Leave - and do it now. As @TeeDee warned, you could wake up one day and discover that a decade has passed and you will be destroyed with bitterness and recriminations at the time that could've been spent with someone who would've recognised your worth - and the family that you could've had with them. I've seen this happen with female friends who hoped that if they were patient and persistent enough with men who had a vested interest in avoiding a formalised commitment that marriage and/or children would happen. It never did. Those men wanted to have a woman in their lives on their selfish terms and were indifferent the needs of the women whose lives they were wasting away. Strongly disagree here: the first 12 months are the real getting to know each other phase - and then, if you can still stand the sight of one another after that amount of time has passed, is where you can decide what the future plans should be. Assessing someone as marriage material within the first 6 months is way too soon and liable to lead to bad decisions. Then he is contemptible and not a moment further should be wasted on him. Excise this man from your life and no matter what he says or promises, remain firm and strong and keep the door to your life firmly closed to him. Otherwise he will attempt to worm his way back in with empty promises and resume wasting your time. Okay, he's signalled that he doesn't care for you at all. In no way is that meant to be insensitive on my part. Sometimes we need the awful truth to jolt us into taking action. It's really time to move on from him and be with someone who wants you and shares your goals for the future.

I was criticised by someone for failing to do "the correct thing" by telling her that all contact was at an end but this seemed like a bizarre outlook to me because I really couldn't see the point under these circumstances. The formal goodbye applies to situations where mutual respect is in operation. Totally agree. The rage, the resentment and hate in her eyes as she screamed at me is something that I'll never forget. She was angry at me for asking that her family behave respectfully towards me but never angry at them for their actions towards me. Not only did she scream, she also slammed a fist down onto the table and had reacted with annoyance when I offered to read the coffee shop food menu for her as she'd forgotten her reading glasses and ranted that she didn't want my help and would prefer to struggle unaided. All of this solidified my realisation that I was in an extremely toxic situation which wouldn't take much on her part to become physically abusive. An excellent idea. I'm meeting a friend on Tuesday for dinner, so that will be a good start. Thank you. 🙂 That's a good point - I hadn't picked up on that angle. Why would you repeatedly relay to someone else that your mother despises them and then make them listen to the details of the fun weekend(s) that you had with that person? I know right? The mother treats me with disdain - unchallenged by her daughter, I brush it off and kill her with kindness and she complains to her daughter that I made her uncomfortable. Experts in projection and deflection.

As others have already mentioned, violence - especially gory violence in film/TV content can sometimes be intended as gallows humour where the audience are supposed to laugh at the over-the-top or cartoonish nature of the proceedings but even then, not everyone would find amusement in those situations and it's important for others to be sensitive to that. For example, I introduced a family member to a highly acclaimed procedural police drama and after a few episodes they asked that I turn it off as they found the violence upsetting. I respected their wishes and later explained that I'd wanted them to watch the show because it covered many social issues that they have felt passionate about and been involved in campaigning to address. They then understood my intentions but I never attempted to persuade them to resume watching it and I certainly didn't become angry with them and rant that it meant we could never watch anything together in future. This is the red flag that you should be concerned about the most, in my humble opinion.

She also defended their rudeness. The original post was truncated because it was already fairly long but she said that it constituted "cancel culture" for her to tell her family that they should stop their behaviour as people should have the right to do as they please without fear of censorship. Probably because she put doubts in my head by accusing me of misogyny on the grounds that the disrespectful behaviour involved female members of her family and as such, I was supposedly dictating to women how they should behave in society. Yeah, I know - absolute balderdash but this is what I was accused of. The replies have helped me realise otherwise. With the help of all of you, the more that I reflect on this situation, the worse it sounds - far more than I'd actually realised. A daughter who protected the husband who abused one of her children by persuading the victimised child to accept the charges being reduced so that the husband wouldn't face prison time, under the rationale that if he's incarcerated then who is going to pay child support for the youngest child. A daughter who chose to spend the day hanging out with friends whilst one of her children underwent open-heart surgery and dismissed her negligence as something which she and the child concerned are now "past." A daughter whose youngest child has been removed from the daughter's home and taken to another city by one of her daughter's older children, who has informally assumed custody of them. Thanks. Consider me well and truly run away. 🙂

Thanks so much for these supportive and compassionate replies, they really mean a lot! 🙂 I appreciate the validation and you're absolutely right, it was destined to disaster. Now that I reflect on everything I see that loud and clear - and yeah, I won't miss them at all! That's a good idea, I should probably print it out and keep it nearby. Thank you. It'll take me a while to fully detox from this episode but I'm already looking forward to being in a relationship with someone who is nice. During our final interaction, I had stressed that if the positions were reversed and she had been treated this way that I would've stepped in and dealt with it - resolutely. I think that summed up the level of esteem that I held her in - which was not reciprocated on her side. Agreed. Will do. 🙂 Yes, when I received the phone call notifying me of the latest incident with her mother, I predicted that there would be no pushback on the part of my ex-GF and prepared myself for this outcome. It really speaks volumes about the level of horrendousness that you reached this verdict upon knowing only a fraction of her behaviour. Absolutely. We started off as friends - I was unaware of much of this background till fairly recently when she began opening up about details from her past marriages on a major level. (During the friendship phase I didn't even know that she'd been married twice.) If I'd been aware of the entire story at the beginning I would've ran like hell.

Apologies for a long post but it's important to provide the context to this story... I'm in my late 40s and for the better part of 8 months I'd been seeing a woman in her early 50s who has been married twice and has three children ranging from 12 to 30. She introduced me to her mother who immediately reacted towards me with prejudicial comments (I'm black) and I was rather disappointed that my GF failed to gently dissuade her from this and instead sat in silence. This was a foreshadowing of things to come. The mother asked me about my level of education and I explained that I have a master's and the UK version of a summa cum laude bachelors degree - plus that I was also working towards a PhD. She expressed disapproval at my choices of university degrees - going as far as to tell me what I should've studied instead. Out of respect for my GF and wishing to keep the peace, I took it all in my stride, remained ultra-polite, smiled and brushed it off as best as possible. Things seemingly improved as the evening progressed and towards the end, the mother made a point of saying that I was welcome to return and visit her again. However, my GF informed me that soon afterwards her mother had instructed her never to bring me over ever again as she disliked me and I'd made her feel uncomfortable. This was said in front of my GF's 12 year old daughter, which I thought was poor-form on numerous levels, especially that she deserved the opportunity to form her own opinion of me. Later at a gathering, I was introduced by my GF to her 30 year old daughter who took one look at me and couldn't even bring herself to say hello and walked past me and spent the day speaking to everyone else in attendance. I subsequently discussed the incident with my GF and opined that she should ask her daughter why she behaved that way towards me but she refused to do so. A week ago, I received a phone call from my GF that her mother had asked whether she was still in a relationship with me and was vocal in her opposition to this and went as far as referring to me in derisory language. She refused to divulge over the phone what exactly was said, so I suggested that we meet up and discuss it over coffee. On Monday we got together and she was reluctant to disclose what the mother had said but eventually revealed that among other things she had called me "a loser and a bum." This really irked me because not only is it untrue and uncalled for, I've been a far better significant other than her daughter's two husbands - both of whom were financial leeches, domestic violence perpetrators who sat around the house all day - and one of them is a child molester who was caught abusing one of the daughter's children. My GF refused to tell her mother to stop disparaging me and accused me of making a big deal about nothing and that I ought to suck it up. Despite being constantly interrupted and talked over, I stated that I'm a human being, that I don't deserve this treatment and pointed out that there's a pattern of her family disrespecting me and reminded her of the incident involving the eldest daughter. At this point she screamed at me that her daughter can act towards me however she pleases. That was my cue to sever all ties. I blocked every avenue that she could use to contact me because I don't see anything constructive that could be gained from further communication with her. I realise that blocking is often seen as a cowardly tactic but it's also a necessity for self-care. What do you think of this situation? Did I do the right thing in walking away? Please share your thoughts.