When you date a girl who used to date one of your friends. It happened to me twice before I wised up and stopped dating those girls. (FTR, I was never behind the breakup between them.)
There was always an akward silence whenever her name would come up, and I’d be there trying to think of ways to break the quiet without saying something like “So . . . did she do the thing with the ice cubes with you??”
It so happened that I ran into the opposite situation once, too. A girl broke up with me in college and later began dating one of my friends. I felt kind of betrayed . . . and yet strangely aroused.
What gets me is when I am walking behind someone at work or in a store and I unintentionally end up following the person because I happened to be headed to the same place as they are going. I don’t want the other person to think I’m stalking them (though if it’s a female and she’s hot the view is nice while I can enjoy it), but I have to wonder what they are thinking when I have been behind them since entering the store. The same thing happens when I am driving and I don’t want the person in the car ahead of me to call the cops on their cell phone out of false paranoia towards me just because my destination happens to coincide with theirs. If I encounter this situation when going towards the restroom I’ll either find another restroom or abort and come back later. Following someone into the john, even unintentionally, is just too creepy for me.
Mine is somewhat similar to SurrenderDorothy’s. I hate walking behind women, in certain situations.
There was one woman who was on a very similar schedule to me, and we shared part of the same route to our jobs. The thing is, we both took a short-cut through a very out-of-the-way place which wasn’t even meant to be a footpath.
The thing is, I’ve been with (what I dearly hope is) an inordinately high number of rape survivors, and in some cases been privy to anxiety and panic attacks of varying degrees – so I have what is hopefully too much attention on how a woman in that situation might be perceiving me. A guy regularly following a short distance behind, through an area that’s totally cut off from public view. Whenever I see that over-the-shoulder glance, I feel panic.
Now, I believe that there logically must have been times when I was ahead of her and I’m sure that she was just as able as I to work out that we just were on the same schedule, but I simply could not bring myself to walk at the pace I needed to and overtake her in that out-of-the-way place – even if keeping a “safe” distance made me a little late for work.
Walking behind a woman at night, when no-one else is around? I have to cross the street, even if it means re-crossing later. Intellectually, I know that in most cases this is all about my anxiety. My anxiety about potentially inspiring anxiety. Weird, but it’s practically hard-wired by now, and I don’t think I could change it if I tried.
I also hate eating in front of people who aren’t eating. I don’t know why, but it feels wrong. Even with people I engage in all manner of intimacy with. People who know me well usually leave me alone to finish my meal – although no-one has ever commented on this peculiarity of mine. Sometimes people don’t, though, and I find it unbearable. I can’t take a bite while they stand there and chat about whatever happened to them while they were out – and if it looks like they’re feeling particularly chatty, I have to put it away for later. And of course I can’t let on that I feel uncomfortable, because that would be rude.
Well, I don’t kow if it is so much a situation as it is behavior, but I cannot stand when I go into a public bathroom, sit down to pee, and then I hear the person in the stall next to me answer their cell phone and have a conversation midstream. I can MAYBE understand talking on the phone in the bathroom at your house if you have asked permission of the person on the other line, again MAYBE. In a public restroom though that is just not cool, and I have to sit there and hold it until they are done with their conversation because I don’t want the person on the other end of the phone to hear me pee. At that point I have been sitting in the stall for several minutes and I am sure people think I am feeling ill or something, but it doesn’t matter if there is a line of people waiting or not because I simply cannot do my business when someone is on the phone in a public bathroom.
I hate running into ex-friends. A recent string of crazy events in my life has left me with a lot of them, most of whom attend my small community college. One of them has one of the two Dodge cars that are completely indistinguishable with each other–the Charger and the Magnum, I think hers is a Magnum–and whenever I see either (and they’re always white like hers) I freak out because I know she’s been working on some crazy plan and I’m going to end up in some intensely fucked up situation again.
That said: she and I found out a mutual “friend” (the first of the now mightily long string of ex-friends) fucked me over, and I stopped talking to that guy immediately. Went from swapping stories all the time to no contact whatsoever. He didn’t say anything, and he was in a class with me twice a week, too–didn’t call, didn’t stop me after class and go “Hey, man, haven’t talked to you in a while. What’s up? Been busy?” She said it was because he knew that I knew what he’d pulled on me behind my back, and he was hiding from me. And then she fucked me over and she’s doing the same thing now–I stopped talking to her completely when I figured out what was going on, and she hasn’t said a word even though she has my number (she did leave one creepy voicemail message and then leave it alone) and knows where I am every day, down to the room number (she was going to take the same summer class as me, but didn’t). If she had put a serious effort into trying to get in touch with me I’d think that maybe I’d misread her. But now I know I was right about everything.
Fuckers. The lot of them.
This has a name: the Giggle Loop. (The text version doesn’t do it justice, it has to be seen on DVD.)
It’s not like they’ll know it’s you. Anyway, that’s the stall resident’s fault for talking on the phone in the bathroom.
I call people while visiting the urinal, but only if they’ve had my body parts in their body parts before. I figure it’s not much of a leap. (And anyway if I’m going to the bathroom and calling someone at the same time it’s because I’m in a short or technically nonexistant class break and also need to call someone in particular–I have to economize my time and put the two activities together.)
Heh, that’s funny. Me and a friend both had “relations” with the same girl with out knowing it till after the fact. We didn’t even think twice before comparing notes.
Of course I was much younger back then. I can’t imagine I would do that now.
FTR: Just about everything in this thread freaks me out too…
In New York City’s crowded restaurants, sometimes you have to share a table with other people.
The first time this happened to me when I went to dinner with an female friend, and we were seated next to another couple. The etiquette in this situation is to not acknowledge the other people at all. Sort of like guys at urinals.
I found this unbelievably uncomfortable. Especially when my friend, being a hardened New Yorker who is used to such things, began recounting her recent sexual exploits.
I love hanging out with my brother, but every once in a while he has a get-together and his wife’s entire family comes over. They are very VERY nice people, too nice, too huggy, too smothering.
At first I tried, I really did. I hugged back, made small-talk, tried to be a part of it all, but I’m not. They are strangers to me, even after six years. Now I usually sit in a quiet corner the entire time, pretending to be engrossed in my brother’s books, all the while wishing I wasn’t so damned shy and hoping they don’t think I’m incredibly rude.
Recently I learned that my brother has my back, and has explained to them that I’m just anti-social, not a snob.
…or drop something heavy on their heads from an upstairs window. :dubious: No seriously, I see how you feel. Especially when the ex is with some dweeb/creep boyfriend or husband.
I have to go on a cruise soon and my friends are loving the prospect of me sitting uncomfortably at a dinner table with six other people having to make small talk.
Are you talking about sitting at a table for four and they put two strangers at your table? I have lived in and about NYC for about 5 years now and I have never encountered or heard of anyone encountering such a situation. I’ve been at restaurants where the tables are almost on top of each other but they are still separate tables.
I did have a similar situation at a company I worked at long ago. We had a restaurant in the ground floor of the building and all the waitresses knew us. So I show up one night by myself and the waitress sits me with some coworkers who I didn’t know (there are about 1000 people at that company).
I wouldn’t say it freaks me out, but I do get uncomfortable when I run into someone that I know who does not recognize me. I don’t know why, but I have had this problem my entire life.
People I ran with for two years will not recognize me a year later, and I tend to remember minute details about everyone I’ve ever known. It’s uncomfortable to try to say, “I’m Indygrrl, I used to run around with you when you lived with Jackass McGee on 10th Street, remember?” I’m not exactly the kind of person who blends right into a crowd, so I don’t know what the hell it is.
Walking into a mens room to use the facilities, only to find two of the three urinals already in use. Or discovering that there are no urinals, merely a trough. I’m not ashamed of my body, but for some reason those two lavatory moments freak me out.
Also: large, pressing clumps of people wandering about in an aimless fashion with no sense of a standard direction for foot-traffic, like a county fair or a very busy mall. That always makes me intensely claustrophobic, which I’m normally not.
