Social Interaction

[Lorna]

hi transiten
what a stressful afternoon you had and i'm sorry that the situation unfolded as it did

i wonder if gender played a part in this, you mentioned the guy was from an arabic country, so possibly a patriarchal cultural background? there are still sadly an awful lot of men who won't accept anything a woman tells them - i see this in my own family, a very recent situation where my mother tried to have a discussion with my uncle and it escalated into quite a volatile situation because fundamentally she's female and was trying to tell him something that he didn't want to hear, so he became aggressive, loud and belittled her

anyway, that's possibly off on a tangent

looking back an alternative approach may have been to have checked whether your other neighbours felt similarly and then jointly wrote them a letter, or expressed concern to the landlord and asked them to have a word?

or in the situation as it unfolded today once aggression started to simply take a step back physically and retreat

however, it sounds to me as though this situation has given you much to think about and therefore it is perhaps not a bad thing that it happened. people you thought would be supportive towards you turned out not to be, that is useful information to know, it really is, although i'm sure you feel some trauma and a sense of loss from that realisation.

you imply that you stirred up aggression - it doesn't sound to me as though that is what happened, instead it sounds as though the aggression was already very close to the surface and you were simply a catalyst to it bursting through.

be gentle with yourself transiten x