So many of my trips on trains end up being adventures. The latest one is no exception. But I’m still shocked at what took place, but the bemusing thing is, I shouldn’t be.
I know the nature of this individual well enough by now. Yet, no matter how often even therapists encounter malevolent people, incredulous, jaw-dropping responses are predictable.
The event started like this, on a semi-crowded train: “Excuse me,” the man said in the ‘gentlest and politest’ of voices… no answer. “Excuse me,” he repeated, signalling to the attractive Indian woman sitting across the carriage. “Excuse me,” he said on the third occasion… with a ‘sincere curiosity’, he continued, “What are you studying?” (She was reading a book that looked either like a novel or a text of some kind.) It wasn’t just his appearance that seemed weird. It was the supreme confidence he waved with his words. It was the way he zeroed in on her, as if she were the only person on the face of the earth—in the FIRST MINUTE of them being in the same space.
Now, when a complete stranger asserts themselves ‘ever so sincerely and curiously’, with a charm that belies an absolute lack of relationship, on public transport no less, it rings alarm bells for me.
I was eight feet from him and eight feet from her if you drew a triangle. My way is to draw attention to the aggression I discern through eye contact—both with the woman on this occasion and the offending male. I don’t care how sincere this man thought he was, this woman’s life was in jeopardy, as we’ll soon discover. I noticed one other woman across from me pick up there was something very awry in this situation.
“I own [such-and-such] restaurant,” he continued, as he sought to woo her in his web—pick-up line after pick-up line. He was relentless in his asking questions, but ‘ever so sincere’ if you know what I mean (in other words, he was tenacious). When a complete stranger is tenacious toward us, that’s unsafe and a boundary violation. Would we even accept tenacity toward us from someone we know really well?
“Can I read the blurb [of the book],” he queried, as he motioned for her to pass it to him. “No!” I’m thinking. She resisted at this point. And then with a slight of hand, he says…
“Hey, how about we connect… do you do [social media]… hey, do you want to just pass me your phone?” At this point I’m thinking, “No, DON’T do that. Don’t give him ANYTHING.”
But she did.
He starts thumbing through her Facebook, takes about a full minute to find his own profile, and then sends himself a friend request from her! I’m thinking, “This is nuts!” (Little did I realise at the time, though, that this woman was handling this aggression the best way she could—without making a fuss. As a man, I often don’t get how many tricky situations women end up in just because they’re women.)
At about this point, I actually made lingering eye contact with the woman, and it was body language to say, “I’m noticing something unsafe here, are you okay?” Once that message was received by her, I turned to him and just stared. What do you think he did? Stared back, of course. With the same audacity of the rock spider to come onto the woman, he wouldn’t be threatened by me.
At this point the woman promptly left the train at the station we pulled up to. I prayed then that she would immediately delete the friend request send and then disinfect the phone.
There are narcissists who won’t take no for an answer. The boldest kind. They live and breathe entitlement, shout exploitation from the rooftops, and if you even make the merest suggestion they’re out of line, they’ll sick the thought police onto you.
The man I encountered on the train was overtly manipulating not only the woman, and all us fellow passengers, he was manipulating the situation, and his presence was deviantly controlling.
Women are often the commonest target of these kinds of patently evil people; persons who have made individuals of their choosing their target for whatever they want to achieve; a psychopathic intent.
When we’re in a situation—any social situation—where a person won’t take no for an answer, where we feel cornered, where we’re under pressure to do exactly what they want, we, at that moment, are dealing with a narcissist.
Pray to God for a quick escape if you’re fearful. If you have support around you (which is probably not the case, for like a public situation, who will stand for you?—and narcissists love getting their targets alone) defy them politely. And yet sometimes just to be aware of the manipulation is enough to get to safety.
There are some who will read this and see the obviousness in the predation of the man tenaciously chasing conversation with a woman who was trying to be polite and—get this—trying to protect the predator’s dignity. Others won’t see it at all and may even see this as me hating on men.
The behaviour is stark, and it is on trains and buses everywhere; in schools and at workplaces, in churches, and horrendously so in family homes.
One final word on narcissistic predation. This man had the poise of a psychopathic predator who will take no for an answer from no one. This person is a real person, and when the mood takes them, their conquest is their conquest. These are the men (and women) who rape and murder people. And they’re in our everyday life.
Be aware and be as safe as you can be.
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