Best, Fred

First, the story’s a little condensed to get to the pertinent information. It sounded like there was some other chit chat happening before leading up to “I have to ask you something.” None of it sounded angry or confrontational. Asking what happened on the night of the event didn’t come across as angry or “telling him off.” I thought I detected a little nervousness in Fawn’s voice which was probably the “Is this me?” coming out, but I could just as easily have been projecting my own nervousness onto the situation. I sometimes don’t say the things that maybe “should” be said for fear of chumming up the waters.

It came across as the need to express Fawn’s perception of the situation and invited the guy (I don’t know his name and wouldn’t mention it here if I did) to express his perception of the situation. It seemed gutsy.

Regardless, Fawn, you know what you did and why it was important to you. I see it too, and I am proud of you.

I’m sorry you were in pain. do you feel like the pain went away after the conversation?

It seems sad to me. You aren’t obligated at all of course.

I could see it as he was sad/depressed when you left after an hour and felt insecure about what was going to happen at the art show so he brought a friend. Or there are a hundred ways to imagine that it wasn’t about being rude to you. Have people ever felt you were rude, when really there was something else entirely going on?

I guess since it was about having pleasant conversations in a coffeehouse and not about dating, that if you had let it go (which could be read as not stepping on you, but just his own behavior about who knows what buried issues), that maybe then it would just go back to pleasant conversations in the coffeehouse and maybe meeting outside of there didn’t really work for either of you. Now I wonder if it can go back to the way it was. Has it? Could it? Would you want it to?

In the same way, your part sounds like so much more – like it isn’t really about this person, but about a whole history of pain, and being stepped on and hurt, that really he had nothing to do with that history, when I read this, I feel sad. Sad that you carry that with you. Sure, we all carry things with us, but when you tell the story, the pride you feel in telling him off, it seems like there is more behind it.

I know it is a story I am spinning too. but in the beginning it had hope as a connection, which these days seems hard to make, and now it feels a little like that connection is broken.

that is all I meant, you are under no obligation.