Did I handle this interaction with an unstable individual correctly?

August 11, 2023 10:44 AM

I stopped a guy from yelling at two women and put myself at risk in the process. Did I still do the right thing?

I was walking through a pedestrian zone earlier this morning. Sunny day, lots of people around. While buying a bagel, I noticed a man (around 60) yelling at two slightly younger women. Calling them lazy for sitting on a bench with their dogs, screaming that dogs will urinate everywhere, and claiming that this puts kids at risk. He did not know the women, but yelled some misogynistic crap about how it's only women who would do this. For the record, I love dogs and these particular dogs were very well-behaved, leashed, and had not even been observed peeing anywhere! I'm in Europe, and it is not at all uncommon for dogs to be in pedestrian zones. I think it might matter that I present as a non-threatening young-ish woman.

I felt obligated to step in, and I did the only thing I could think of: I walked up to the guy, put myself between him and the women (never getting close, but blocking his view a little), and then I talked to him. I didn't try to logic him out of his anger, as he was obviously too agitated. I basically nodded my head and made soothing sounds when he ranted about dogs, agreed that kids should not be touching dog urine, and asked questions. He angrily demanded people walk their dogs in the nearby park only, I asked where exactly that park is. He said he's just protecting children, I asked if he's a father. He said he's protecting his neighborhood, I asked if he grew up around the area. Like that.

After a few minutes of this, he calmed down considerably and sat on a bench. He invited me to sit with him, and I did. We chatted a little bit, which I did not particularly enjoy. I didn't feel threatened, though, just uncomfortable. Intense guy. He gave me some fairly zen life advice ("Live every day like it's your birthday, dude."), and I eventually ended the interaction by saying I had to get going. The dog owners had left at that point. As I was getting up to go, the guy commented on my calming presence, added that I'm "nice to look at" (yuck) and asked if I exercise.

Through all of this, my husband was close by. He didn't get involved and is now telling me I shouldn't have, either. He's saying the guy might've had a weapon, he might recognize me at a different time, and that I should have called the police at the very most.

Law enforcement is overall okay where I am, so maybe he has a point. On the other hand, I don't know if they'd even come out for something like this, and the situation seemed too volatile to wait. Plus, police can certainly escalate situations like this without any intent to do so.

I felt proud of myself for stepping in, but now I don't. What do you think?

posted by toucan to Human Relations (28 answers total)

Best answer: I don't think your husband is wrong about you putting yourself at some degree of risk, and it seems like that's probably coming from a caring and protective place. I don't think it would have been wrong for you to do nothing, but it sounds like you were careful about your approach, and from what you describe, I don't see anything wrong with your choice. I'm glad you didn't call the police, because it's hard to imagine almost any way that could have had a better end result.

(This answer is not coming from any sort of expert in such interactions, just my gut feeling.)
posted by obfuscation at 10:49 AM on August 11, 2023 [6 favorites]

Best answer: I think you did great. Yes there's some risk, but there's also risk that a harmless seeming person who asks the time or for directions will turn out to be dangerous. You sound like you have good instincts and were operating based on your own sense of risk vs responsibility in the moment. If we want to live in communities where people look out for each other then it's realistic to accept some risk when we feel like we can.
posted by Rhedyn at 10:49 AM on August 11, 2023 [35 favorites]

Best answer: You did exactly what I was taught in bystander intervention training. I think you did the right thing, I think your personal risk is not dramatically altered by the encounter. If the dude was hankerin' for an assault, probably one of the 3 of you (or the dogs) would have gotten hurt, sure, but most of the time these people are just personality issues looking for a target rather than someone who really wants to spend time in jail.

This is really about what you feel you owe your community. Obviously it's not your job to intervene, it isn't 100% riskless, but neither is leaving your home in the first place. Or staying home. But this is part of how we make the places we live nicer, even at the expense of a bit of risk.
posted by Lyn Never at 10:51 AM on August 11, 2023 [42 favorites]

Best answer: First, I think you should go ahead and allow yourself to feel proud for stepping in. You put yourself in an unpleasant situation to protect other people and tried (and succeeded!) to de-escalate it rather than going in hostile.

All of that is commendable.

He *could* have been dangerous. He *could* have had a weapon. He wasn't and apparently didn't. You can consider those things if there's a next time, and decide whether you are risking too much by being involved.

But... I'm on the side of getting involved unless I judge a situation to be too dangerous. I think your husband may be feeling some kind of way because his wife defused a situation he didn't step in on. Now he wants to convince you that it was too dangerous because he wasn't willing to step in. (That's my read, anyway. I could be wrong.)

There's no one exactly right way to handle things like this. There are a lot of wrong ways. You chose one possible right way, IMO. Feel proud. You did good. Thank you.
posted by jzb at 10:53 AM on August 11, 2023 [28 favorites]

Best answer: Bullshit, if your husband really thought you were under threat, he should have called the police. Oh he didn't? Why not? How interesting.

You did fine. No reason you should feel you have to stay captive with the creep just because you intervened, but as an intervener myself I'm certainly not going to Monday morning quarterback your choices. You almost certainly made the other women feel safer than they would have without you there, and that's commendable.

As a mouthy woman I have noticed a whole bunch in my life that men are quick to say after the fact how physically violent a situation could have become. As if we women aren't constantly aware of the threat of violence from men. If a man wants to have an opinion on it, he can be the one to step up. Otherwise, it's just noise.
posted by phunniemee at 11:00 AM on August 11, 2023 [110 favorites]

Best answer: I think you did something kind for the three strangers and the two little dogs.

I wonder if your husband doesn't feel a little embarrassed that he didn't respond in the moment. Men get lots of messages in lots of cultures about being Quick-Thinking Strong Manly Protectors. His pride might be hurt, even if he doesn't mean for it to be.

Maybe you two could take one of those community intervention trainings together, like Lyn Never mentioned.
posted by Snarl Furillo at 11:03 AM on August 11, 2023 [14 favorites]

Best answer: I think your initial feeling that you're proud of yourself for stepping in is the most important one. It also sounds to me that you responded in a skillful and appropriate way. I can imagine a situation where you'd done the same thing and come away feeling unsafe or that you'd overextended yourself and so it's good to check in with how you feel but it would be important that that's your feeling, not someone else's. It doesn't sound to me like your husband is adding context that you wouldn't have been aware of so is perhaps responding more about his feelings that he should initially deal with on his own and approach as that, his feelings rather than in being about how you act.
posted by mosswinter at 11:05 AM on August 11, 2023 [6 favorites]

Best answer: Please, go back to feeling proud, you are awesome. I'm side-eyeing your husband a little bit, for not walking over after you had nimbly, admirably defused the situation and were sitting on the bench -- I think his presence then would have wrapped that up quicker and with less ick for you.

He may have realized this himself, actually, which is spurring the "he might recognize [you] at a different time" -- your husband didn't do the performative posturing the older, harassing man might have respected, at a time it might have benefitted you? If you're usually in this area together and you should see the guy again, your spouse could hold your hand, put an arm around your shoulder, or otherwise signal that you're not alone/have the "protection" of a man.
posted by Iris Gambol at 11:10 AM on August 11, 2023 [21 favorites]

Best answer: +1 to phunnimee.

You were certainly under no obligation to do what you did but I’M proud of you, it sounds like you handled it with aplomb. Very compassionate thing to do.

I’m not going to judge your husband too harshly because who knows what is going through his head, but it’s possible he feels ashamed (for doing nothing) and took it out on you. Or intimidated by your skill. Or just is a “don’t get involved” guy who is angry that you went out on a limb. None of those are particularly pride inducing, so I imagine his lack of respect for your effort comes from that place.
posted by stoneandstar at 11:11 AM on August 11, 2023 [12 favorites]

Best answer: I believe in you and I think your instincts are good and you sound very skilled and levelheaded under pressure. I think you are right to feel proud.

It's easy to criticize someone with 20/20 hindsight but you don't have to take those criticisms to heart. It's hard to know how to do the right thing in the moment and I think you did great. You know how Captain Picard would say "Noted." when he was given advice he wasn't going to act on? You might want to channel him in this situation - just receive your husband's advice and then incorporate that into what you know about the situation, your judgment and skills, your husband's judgment and ability/willingness to help under pressure, etc.

With 20/20 hindsight what I see is that calling police as he recommended likely would have had a much worse outcome.
posted by fritley at 11:12 AM on August 11, 2023 [5 favorites]

Best answer: I certainly would have taken the same approach but as a relatively large male the risk would have been lower. I still think you did the right thing, although I do wonder why the women hadn’t just walked away.

As for your husband I suspect he’s feeling "oh my god someone i love was in imminent danger oh my god" and is responding accordingly. Slightly different, but I have had incidents where I have talked to people who were apparently schizophrenic and my friends were terrified. People can reasonably have different assessments of situations and I usually apologize to my friends for scaring them. But the apology comes after, first I help people.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 11:25 AM on August 11, 2023 [2 favorites]

Best answer: I think if everyone had your compassion and skill the world would be a better place.

I also suspect, like others here, that your husband's irritation is coming from a place of shame. I don't blame him for being surprised or annoyed at first when you decided to get involved, because it's so much easier and safer (for you) to not get involved at all; but once you'd handled it, he should have come over and helped extricate you from the follow-up conversation. Not an unpardonable sin that he didn't -- maybe he just didn't think that you'd need the help, since you'd handled the rest of it -- but not ideal.
posted by fingersandtoes at 11:39 AM on August 11, 2023 [15 favorites]

Best answer: Even if it was riskier than not intervening, it's the sort of risk you're absolutely entitled to feel proud about taking, especially since you handled the situation as well as anyone could have.
posted by BungaDunga at 11:43 AM on August 11, 2023 [6 favorites]

Well played, that toucan.
posted by flabdablet at 11:54 AM on August 11, 2023 [2 favorites]

I probably would not have personally sat on the bench with him, because that would have been beyond my comfort zone. But if you felt ok, then I think that’s what matters.
posted by samthemander at 11:54 AM on August 11, 2023 [5 favorites]

Agree with the consensus, you did an excellent job here - you were in a better position than the dog owners to de-escalate the situation, and you did so admirably. The risk was more than 0, but low, especially once he calmed down.

You husband either feels shame for not stepping in himself, or perhaps he has a skewed sense of what is dangerous. This man would seem to have proven himself as mostly harmless, so I don't see why it matters if he recognizes you in the future.
posted by coffeecat at 12:08 PM on August 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I felt proud of myself for stepping in

You should, not just for stepping in but for how you then behaved. I might also have stepped in, but there's no way I would have had the same presence of mind or effective (and generous) approach. The actions that a person can be proud of are unfortunately not always the ones that are smartest or safest, which is one of the worst things about the world. But you should be very proud. You chose to take a risk to protect someone else, and you did it with unusual skill.
posted by trig at 12:12 PM on August 11, 2023 [6 favorites]

Best answer: Hi I'm BlueSock, a cop from a medium sized Canadian city. I came here to say "thank you". You did great.

+1 to Lyn Never who has already said most of what I wanted to say, but I also want to address this from the law enforcement perspective.

Did you need to call the police? Nope, you were clearly fine without them.
Could you have called the police? Sure!

I have two main complaints when it comes to dealing with the public, and this question is exactly where they meet in the middle and contradict each other....

My first complaint is often that people wait WAY too long to call the police, because although their subconscious is screaming that something is wrong, they hesitate to act for various reasons (and I'm not just referring the the Bystander Effect). Our brains have evolved for millions of years to register social cues and let us know when someone is dangerous, and I've lost count of the number of times people could have been saved some trouble if they had trusted their gut and called 9-1-1 a few minutes earlier.

On the other hand, I feel like a huge number of police calls are unnecessary and the issue often boils down to people not being willing to just engage and talk to each other. I can't count the number of times I've been called to ask someone to move along from private property only to realize that I'm the first person to talk to them at all - people see the homeless or the mentally ill and get scared for no good reason and then all of a sudden it's a cop asking them to move along, when as far as they're aware they haven't even been bothering anyone. Police presence can indeed be an escalation in and of itself, and it something we're often painfully aware of, but not all the people who call us think about it that way.

It's also worth noting that your husband probably wasn't completely wrong either, but he was probably putting himself in your position, and that's a big change in this scenario. Folks react differently to a cop then they do to a regular person, and they also react very differently to different genders. If you could script out what you said to this guy and give that script to yourself, your husband, and me, I bet those three scenarios would play out very differently even if we adopted your exact body language, wording and intent. So I wouldn't be too hard on him for not seeing things your way, and I would respect his assessment that doing X could be dangerous, as long as he understands that what is dangerous for HIM and dangerous for YOU could be very different due to how gender norms effect these interactions.
posted by BlueSock at 12:23 PM on August 11, 2023 [19 favorites]

Good job on intervening. I think that was the right thing to do, and not all of us are so brave.

(because I'm not as nice) I would not have offered extended conversation with the guy, however. It "rewards" him for his actions. Plus, it teaches him that women will step in and perform emotional labor on his behalf, even when he's way out of line.
posted by Dashy at 12:28 PM on August 11, 2023 [2 favorites]

I would defer to anyone with training on bystander interactions, but there does not seem to be any reason to doubt your instincts or actions in this situation. I think you can be confident that your assessment of the situation was reasonable and that you did what was right for you.
posted by bruinfan at 12:30 PM on August 11, 2023

Best answer: You definitely did the right thing, and I think your husband did too — if he had stepped forward, it would have turned the interaction into a male-male pride contest, and things could have escalated very quickly.

He’s definitely wrong to chide you, however.
posted by jamjam at 1:11 PM on August 11, 2023 [5 favorites]

Best answer: I think you’re wonderful. I also have experienced male partners being uncomfortable with me intervening on behalf of the vulnerable. I think they’re embarrassed at their own lack of moral courage. Sucks to be them. You can feel good about yourself!
posted by HotToddy at 1:26 PM on August 11, 2023 [3 favorites]

Best answer: Cheers to you! It sounds like you did a great job de-escalating. I've heard advice to center the people being hassled, but your approach worked great and you accomplished your goal. I'm sorry the guy was gross to you, but you handled it all incredibly well.

Yeah, I think your husband is either super anxious, or a man living in a patriarchal world where he feels like he is supposed to be the strong and brave one, so he was threatened by the fact that you were the strong and brave one, and he's dealing with that by scolding for you taking too big of a risk instead of, you know, going to therapy.

Sorry that he has taken a case of you being brave and strong and used it to criticize you. Fuck that, you know?

I saw run a victory lap, run up stairs playing the Rocky theme song, etc. You did something good on behalf of more vulnerable people, and it worked. Go you!
posted by bluedaisy at 1:50 PM on August 11, 2023 [4 favorites]

Best answer: Well done. Your husband, however, deserves a large raspberry. You were handling it, and had he wanted to back you up, he could have had his finger on the 911 button and been discretely videotaping in case things got out of hand. Doesn't sound like he was doing anything to back you up in that fashion. His deriding of what you did after the fact smacks of misogyny.
posted by BlueHorse at 2:05 PM on August 11, 2023 [4 favorites]

Best answer: You did great. Thank you for helping others in need! I too am side-eyeing your husband for a. not joining you, and b. pointlessly criticizing how you handled the situation. With regard to the former, I just find it pretty weird that he stayed totally out of this, especially once it was just you and the guy alone. Even if I don't feel something warrants intervention (and this situation did), if I'm with someone who decides to intervene, I'm not just gonna stand to the side spectating for things to complain about later. I'll either monitor with an emergency call at hand, or join the effort. For instance, while you talked to the unstable guy, I might've pretended to know the women and sat down with them for a chat about something mundane.

In the future, I would avoid getting roped into longer interactions with people like this. Not because you did anything wrong, but because this man did not deserve your time or space. Once he'd calmed down, I might've said something like, "I'm sorry, I can't join you, I have an appointment to make. But have a nice afternoon!" (while already starting to walk away).

I still think you did the right thing, although I do wonder why the women hadn’t just walked away.

"Freeze" is a very common fear response. And even if they weren't necessarily "frozen" to the point of being unable to think, it often feels safer to wait for something to end rather than change the physical terms of the situation. Especially if you're at a size disadvantage. Standing up from the bench or walking away might invite an enraged arm grab, stalking behavior, and other escalations. It is no surprise to me that they didn't try to leave.
posted by desert outpost at 2:55 PM on August 11, 2023 [10 favorites]

I have to disagree with people who think your husband is acting out of some personal shame. From his perspective you took a dangerous risk and lucked out this time.

Through all of this, my husband was close by.

So, once again from his perspective, you placed him in a position where you expected to have him come to your aid if things got ugly. You didn't just insert yourself into the situation, you made him part of it too. I've been there and it is a frustrating thing.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 3:26 PM on August 11, 2023 [5 favorites]

I think you did the right thing. It wasn't zero-risk, but you judged the situation correctly and did a great job of de-escalating. Nice work!

In my opinion, unless there's an imminent risk of violence, calling the cops is always an escalation. It raises the stakes. This guy was being an abusive asshole but it doesn't sound like a fight was about to break out. If you had called the cops, maybe they would have calmed him down ... or maybe they would have been confrontational, or maybe the guy would have seen them as a provocation and gotten even more agitated. Or maybe he was vulnerable in non-obvious ways (past legal troubles, undocumented status, etc.) and involving the cops would've had more serious consequences than he deserved. Or maybe his victims were in the same position, and having to talk to the police would put them at risk. All of those outcomes would be worse than what actually happened. And you yourself proved the cops weren't needed in order to defuse the situation safely.
posted by Gerald Bostock at 3:58 PM on August 11, 2023 [3 favorites]

Best answer: I think what you did is beautiful, brave, humanistic, and highly ethical, and you should feel proud.

It's not something I would have the composure to do because I have high social anxiety, and I'm sure many people would similarly avoid the confrontation (like your husband) due to anxiety.

One thing that could be potentially interesting to think about here is that people have different stress responses. In addition to the fight or flight dichotomy that we are all familiar with, there's also something called "tend and befriend" which seems present mainly in women.

In scientific Internet person terms, it seems like you have that tend and befriend instinct as a stress response and your husband has the "flight" from fight or flight.

But maybe there's more to it than instinctual responses. After all we do all have the capacity to retrain ourselves to live not merely reactively but proactively.

Diffusing tension and preventing violence and harm through empathy and understanding is basically the gold standard of ethical behaviour. And sometimes it takes a stranger with no existing drama in the situation to enable that perspective to come about. Sometimes a display of highly ethical behaviour makes others feel ashamed that they'd never do something similar.

The thing to keep in mind is that acting ethically does not protect us from harm. It seems like you trusted your instincts in this situation and felt that it could be diffused. Maybe your husband doesn't have the instincts you do and is merely reacting as an outsider, and thinks that you didn't stop to check your instincts. Yeah, men do be like that.
posted by winterportage at 6:12 AM on August 12, 2023 [2 favorites]