[Gust Hubb]

I think one of the most depressing things about divorce is not having someone to come home to and share all the small weird stuff of your day. I would have said an empty bed, but I got used to that years ago.

[worry]

[amphibian]

Mezla PigDog, on 05 April 2016 - 04:58 PM, said:

I'm an advocate of avoiding fighting at all costs but sometimes this shit just happens. It sounds to me like the guy totally deserved it. Forget about it!

Fighting is a last resort. It's messy, it's painful, and it can go wrong real fast. But it is and should be a resort.

Gredfallan Ale, on 05 April 2016 - 10:29 AM, said:

Judging by the size of the story it may seem that it took ages for my friends to intervene, but, in reality, it went so darn fast; the fight itself was over before I even truly realised it started. I don't even know what happened in those seconds outside of the fight, my view of the world shrunk to just the two of us, the rest was just a blur, background noise to be suppressed. Only afterwards, I noticed I was shaking and trembling and my heart was racing like crazy.

I never, ever, wish to be in a fight again, but I just don't know how to avoid a fight like this, except for not leaving my house again and I'm not going to do that. The was no warning, no sign I caught, no indication prior to the guy pushing me that something was up. How can you avoid something like that? And, after he pushed, what could I have done to force a different outcome? The thing that scares me is that I have the feeling that I had absolutely no control over the situation and there's little I can do to avoid such a situation. I came out of it fine, but he could have beaten the shit out of me and I seriously have no idea of how I could have avoided it.

Next Saturday, I'm invited to a birthday party in a bar and, while I'm going to attend, I do have mixed feelings about going, mixed feelings I don't want to have.

Some fights you just can't avoid. I think this really was one of them and that even if you'd understood immediately/tried to leave right away, he'd have shoved you and probably tried to hit you.

I put some critiques/commendations in the spoiler blocks below, if you don't want to read them, you don't have to.

Spoiler

In some ways, you did very well. No serious injuries, hands were at chest level almost instinctually, got out of there, and so on.

In other ways, not so well. You let an unknown and aggressive person get too close to you and at a bad angle. That's not good, even if your hands were raised to chest level. I'm not an alarmist like Nicodimas, but letting aggressive people get that close to you is how people get stabbed. You want to see their hands as much as possible. Staying beyond arm's length and angling your back away from the bar is probably the best bet because you don't want to get bent backwards over the bar or shoved under.

The extremely fast time duration despite seeming to you/recollection like it took forever is common with street/bar fights. The three that I've been in over the last 8 years were over in about a minute each. Adrenaline and the other things your body releases/preps during that fight makes for tunnel vision, hyper-awareness within that tunnel vision, and prepares your body to deal with pain/injury (and to deal it out better). The more fights you get in, the more you're accustomed to it and the less crazy your body gets and the more you're able to relax and plan things out.

The shaking is fairly common. You may want to plan to get to a safe place out of sight of the bar next time, have your friends surround you and observe you for signs of the shock medical condition that can happen. It'll wear off and you're not lesser or wrong for shaking, crying, or whatever you feel you want to do. It happens. A fight is stressful. Soldiers deal with this way more often than regular people, but we civilians deal with it too sometimes.

Sparring regularly helps with all of this. I do MMA and Brazilian jiu jitsu at least 3x a week and it's been about 7 and a half years of that. You don't need to put years of training in, but a few sessions a week for a couple months can really help you put things together both for future eventualities and coming to peace with what happened in that one time. Competing/getting hurt in a controlled environment with watchful coaches truly helps. It moves the event from a one time shocker to a more understandable thing, if that makes any sense. At least, this is what one teammate said to me regarding her experiences/goals at BJJ which she trained for a few months.

[Mezla PigDog]

Might change my name to The Mhybe. Six weeks left. Got a cold and a cough which have given me a pulled stomach muscle and one of my hips feels like it might fall out of the socket at any moment. That's on top of general discomfort, digestive "difficulties" and swollen feet. If I have another child I'm going to buy it from poor people.

[Andorion]

Summer has set in properly. 36C+ high temperaturs, high humidity, getting any work done is becoming a challenge

[Andorion]

Briar King, on 06 April 2016 - 06:17 AM, said:

What about Spring?

Spring? We had that in late February and March. Dry, moderately hot weather (below 35C) with a big minimum swing - 20-21C and breezes.

With April, its officially summer. Temperatures are supposed to hit 38. A heatwave warning is out for some parts. Won't let up till June, though forecasts are increasingly bleak, talking about hottest year and so on.

[Egwene]

Gredfallan Ale, on 05 April 2016 - 10:29 AM, said:

Okay, back out of lurking mode.

I never, ever, wish to be in a fight again, but I just don't know how to avoid a fight like this, except for not leaving my house again and I'm not going to do that. The was no warning, no sign I caught, no indication prior to the guy pushing me that something was up. How can you avoid something like that? And, after he pushed, what could I have done to force a different outcome? The thing that scares me is that I have the feeling that I had absolutely no control over the situation and there's little I can do to avoid such a situation. I came out of it fine, but he could have beaten the shit out of me and I seriously have no idea of how I could have avoided it.

Next Saturday, I'm invited to a birthday party in a bar and, while I'm going to attend, I do have mixed feelings about going, mixed feelings I don't want to have.

Glad you made it out of that situation. Your mates also did well in getting you out rather than escalating the fight.

The guy was obviously pretty drunk and at some point had decided he needed to impress someone, whether girlfriend or mates - you probably were just a blur to him - he may even have thought you to be someone else he had seen another time - who knows. The lesson to take away from that is to be aware of people like that when you go out. Unfortunately, a small percentage of the population get aggressive when drunk and don't have the intelligence to stay sober to avoid getting into trouble.

Don't let it put you off going out. Forewarned is forearmed. Your friends were probably just as taken by surprise as you. Think of it as an incidence which is going to make you all more alert and maybe help you avoid a situation worse than that in the future.

[Gorefest]

Gredfallan Ale, on 05 April 2016 - 10:29 AM, said:

I never, ever, wish to be in a fight again, but I just don't know how to avoid a fight like this, except for not leaving my house again and I'm not going to do that. The was no warning, no sign I caught, no indication prior to the guy pushing me that something was up. How can you avoid something like that? And, after he pushed, what could I have done to force a different outcome? The thing that scares me is that I have the feeling that I had absolutely no control over the situation and there's little I can do to avoid such a situation. I came out of it fine, but he could have beaten the shit out of me and I seriously have no idea of how I could have avoided it.

Sounds like you didn't really have any way of avoiding it, the guy was just a drunk idiot. They exist, sadly.

The only thing that springs to mind is to imbalance them mentally. So if they say 'Stop looking at my girlfriend', come back with something like "Which one is your girlfriend? I was looking at a lot of women" or, even more unbalancing, a Derren Brown style response like "My garden fence is six feet tall". Anything that can turn a physical situation into a verbal one, at least to gain some precious seconds for bystanders to perk up and take notice, and hopefully intervene. But in reality, you probably won't have the time or the mental fortitude for it, as these things tend to happen in a flash and you will always be caught on the backhand.


Don't let it unsettle you. It happened just the once, it's never happened before in your life so it's very unlikely to happen again. If you do want to regain a sense of control over events, perhaps avoid that particular bar if it attracts dodgy folk like that and the bar staff does not keep a good eye on the state of their clientele.

[Traveller]

Goddamn it, 10 weeks I've managed to keep things to myself about some medical tests I've been having.

And after a consultation yesterday, my wife thought it would be ok to use my potential worry about results to get out of a weeked trip with her sister in law, just because she can't be bothered to go.

So today, less than 24 hours later, my mother in law is round asking all sorts of questions and being all sympathetic about something she knows next to nothing about; which is exactly what I didn't want.

Why is it I can keep things to myself for 20 years or more but others are incapable of not 'sharing' within a matter of hours?

This post has been edited by Traveller: 06 April 2016 - 05:06 PM

[Mezla PigDog]

Traveller, on 06 April 2016 - 04:41 PM, said:

Why is it I can keep things to myself for 20 years or more but others are incapable of not 'sharing' within a matter of hours?

I loathe a gender stereotype but I'm going to go with "Because women can't keep secrets". I can't keep a secret to save my life!

[Puck]

The birch is now blooming and I am feeling like crap. I hate this.

[Traveller]

Mezla PigDog, on 06 April 2016 - 05:20 PM, said:

Traveller, on 06 April 2016 - 04:41 PM, said:

Why is it I can keep things to myself for 20 years or more but others are incapable of not 'sharing' within a matter of hours?

I loathe a gender stereotype but I'm going to go with "Because women can't keep secrets". I can't keep a secret to save my life!

I was going to say this but thought it might be unfair to some! But really, none of the women in my life can keep a secret; that's why I believe that if you don't want anyone to find out about something, keep it to yourself. She only found out about it because she saw my letter with the hospital stamp on it; and at the time she was mad at me for not telling her about the blood tests and stuff.

Point proved, I think.

This post has been edited by Traveller: 06 April 2016 - 07:00 PM

[JPK]

So, my Mom moved from Oregon (west coast US) to North Carolina east coast US) with my sister and her husband about 2 1/2 years ago. For the first year, I'd call over there about twice a month to check up on them and try to keep in contact with the family. After a year went by, I got the first call from my Mother since she'd moved. Calling to ask me to send money over wire transfer. My wife (fiance at the time) and I were on a camping trip down to the redwood forests of California, but we drove an hour and a half to send it to help her out.

Time goes by. Over the next year after that, I start calling less often as the wedding is getting closer and we're working on plans with both sides of the family for that. We offer to send money to help fly her over for it, but repeatedly she declines. She claims that she has the funds and will make it in time. Well, a week before the wedding she calls me for the second time, letting me know she can't make it to the wedding. I ended up with 1 "nephew" there as the entire representation for my family. To top it off, the kid wasn't even actually a blood-relation, he's my half-brother's stepson.

For about 8 months after that, I left total radio silence from my end. I was feeling very lonely, hurt, and abandoned by my family. I didn't hear from them at all. I finally called over there about 5 months ago again, because I wanted to share the news that my wife and I were expecting a child. Two months go by, I call again to let her know it's a girl. She has to go after about ten minutes, and doesn't have time to talk... I finally got a call again yesterday, because she needs money again. Again, I sent it because she's my Mom and that's what family is supposed to do, right?

At this point, I've pretty much given up on my side of the family entirely. I've tried. I really have, but I feel no reciprocation. I feel very similar to how I described earlier, but add used on top of it. I've tried explaining how I feel to her, but all I get is "You're busy and I never know when I can reach you, so do you can call me." and "You haven't called me in months, you don't care and I feel ashamed your my son."

I know this is unhealthy, but I don't know when to call it quits and say enough is enough.

[QuickTidal]

That sucks. I've seen that before, and at a certain point you may have to sever ties. Especially if the asking for money thing is the only time you ever get real contact. Which sucks cause it's your mom, but it would be better for you.

I have a few friends who had to disconnect from one or both parents. It's never an easy choice, but you gotta do what's right for you and your family (your wife and kid)...they are your nucleus.

[Slow Ben]

Merle Haggard died.

I love that mans music.

In honor of the okie from muskogee, heres my 2 favorite Merle songs.


Sing Me Back Home




Rainbow Stew

[amphibian]

Egwene, on 06 April 2016 - 10:06 AM, said:

The guy was obviously pretty drunk and at some point had decided he needed to impress someone, whether girlfriend or mates - you probably were just a blur to him - he may even have thought you to be someone else he had seen another time - who knows. The lesson to take away from that is to be aware of people like that when you go out. Unfortunately, a small percentage of the population get aggressive when drunk and don't have the intelligence to stay sober to avoid getting into trouble.

There are people who get off by instigating bar fights over girlfriends(whether the offense is real or not, whether the gf wants a fight, or even if the gf exists/doesn't exist). They go to a bar and the goal isn't to have a good time or to relax. The goal is to start a fight over a girlfriend because it somehow makes them feel good to defend their woman from some offense. They usually try and pick a person who doesn't look like they'll fight well and try to get a backdown or a quick win.

I hang out with bouncers fairly regularly and they always have stories of these wingnuts. The most thoughtful bouncer says that most of these men are bisexuals who don't want to be, so the picking on other men is a sort of come-on half repudiated through violence. I dunno about this, but he's the one that deals with this dynamic - not me.

[Gust Hubb]

The lawyer claws are coming out. She has consulted with a lawyer who seems to have told her she can get more. Like me, hasn't hired the attorney yet but I do not foresee the mediation appointment going well at all. $120 down the drain...

I also am kind of worried about venting here. You guys think her lawyer could find this site, find me, and start using this all against me? Nothing like a hearty dose of paranoia to wash down the despair.

[Gnaw]

Gawd rehab is expensive. *sigh*

[amphibian]

Gust Hubb, on 07 April 2016 - 12:38 AM, said:

The lawyer claws are coming out. She has consulted with a lawyer who seems to have told her she can get more. Like me, hasn't hired the attorney yet but I do not foresee the mediation appointment going well at all. $120 down the drain...

I also am kind of worried about venting here. You guys think her lawyer could find this site, find me, and start using this all against me? Nothing like a hearty dose of paranoia to wash down the despair.

How many places do you use the name Gust Hubb? Would she know that you post here?

Change your name here is the easy fix if she vaguely knows you post here or you have GH in many places.

If she has no idea, don't worry about it. This isn't a dating site or a place to get asset hiding advice (you apparently have to go to Panama for that).

[worry]

I did see the name Gustav Hubbovich in the list of Putin's Panama middlemen.