Regularly. Mostly car drivers that endangered me and other cyclists, very often driving their shitty vehicles in cycle lanes instead of the abundant car lanes.

The most aggressive ones wanted to fight me, a lot chased me, one even was handcuffed by police that happened to be nearby (getting handcuffs by police is super rare here in Germany but that guy was so over the top even for a police squad of three officers). Called the police several times and sent several of those carholes to court over endangerment.

I don’t regret confronting such assholes and standing my ground at all. It even improved things in some ways because police started patrolling and controlling more often in my area after several of these rows which immensely improved road safety for cyclists. (And my numerous and constant complaints about shitty parking led to even more police activity which freed the blocked sidewalks in that area.)

Confront if you want change. It helps.

yes, i stand up against racism etc… so even if people consider publicly racist people crazy and try to ignore them, i’ll make sure and confront them. that will either show they’re actually crazy or show them their racism isn’t tolerated. can’t let one slip thru undisputed

Confrontation?

I was in multiple fights between thirty and forty. Even after becoming disabled, I’ve been in a few.

That being said, when I don’t go to bars with friends, and avoid a few specific gas stations, that problem goes away.

Like, the last two? In bars/places that serve enough alcohol to count. My disability and chronic pain support group has a mini group of us that are also friends, and we sometimes like to go somewhere and kinda transition from the intense setting of a support meeting to decompress a little.

For some reason, one of my friends seems to draw trouble. One time, some asshole was giving him grief for being on a mobility scooter. Dude’s spine is all messed up and it’s visible, but this drunk fuck was giving him grief. My crippled ass may be crippled enough it hurts and I pay for it, but I didn’t exactly forget the years of martial arts I trained with. So when the guy laid hands on my friend, that was it.

That was the last fracas I was involved in, and that was pre covid. No regrets. I do not allow people to fuck with my people, be it friends or family.

But, yeah, I’ve had a good bit of violence in my life, even after 30. Truth is that I don’t mind meeting violence with violence. I wish it never happens, I don’t want it, but I don’t fear it. I was a bouncer in my twenties, at a gay/drag club, in the nineties in the south. Any fear of violence got literally beaten out of me back then.

It kinda means that I always see that violence is possible because I’ve seen how people can be. So, instead of allowing someone the chance to hurt someone that I can prevent being hurt, I have no barrier to acting before things get to the point where someone I care about is hurt at all. I’m willing to go after someone with full violence at the first sign they’re willing to cross that line, instead of waiting until things progress to things that can cause injury.

Like the asshole that grabbed my friend’s arm. Maybe he would have stopped there, but he had already shown willing to cross the line with a violent grab. Why should I assume someone doing that and obviously impaired by alcohol will stop there? No, I know what people can do, and I know that some people are just assholes willing to attack someone else with no actual need. I’m just asshole enough that I’m willing to use reasonable force to prevent it getting beyond that.

Mind you, it is reasonable force. Once the asshole is down or otherwise not continuing their attempt, I’m done. I got rid of that kind of adrenaline and anger driven retaliation a while back. There was a time I tended to go past the point the fight was over, and that’s not cool. But I got past that shit with time and therapy.

Which, my fellow men, don’t ever hesitate to do therapy. Life is brutal sometimes. You wouldn’t ignore a broken leg, you’d get help fixing it. Don’t ignore when things in your head need help working through. Ain’t no shame in healing and growing as a person.

After 30 it got down to very rarely. Like I don’t even react unless someone try to hit me. But I got into an altercation with an alcoholic couple months back.

My neighbor died unexpectedly and left behind 4 children. Older is 13 and youngest is 4 or 5. This useless bottom feeder came everyday drunk until stupidly drunk (like he can’t even control his fucking face) and all around being [insert your own insults]. He supposed to be an uncle or something. I warned him about his behavior and how he is being a chore instead of help to the family. Because he can’t even be nice to keep clean while drinking and the family had to clean after him. Couple days goes by there is zero change I warned him couple more times and I saw him one evening drinking again and clearly drunk. I lost it things got to a point where I was being restrained by 4 people. I didn’t see him since. Grandmother of the children asked me if he can come visit and I said if I see him drinking I’ll beat him up again so the choice is his… He didn’t come around. No regrets.

Since the age of 30? Only when on demos/direct actions - or when patrolling the nature reserves where I have worked. In those cases, since I have had NVDA and de-escalation training etc, I have pretty much relied on that: so remain passive, smile, speak, find common ground, use the drama triangle and all the rest.

To be honest, even before the age of 30 (as an adult), as far as I can remember my only real confrontations as such have been in the same or similar situations.

Obviously, I have ended up being dragged off and arrested a few times at the direct actions, and have been hit a couple of times and also deliberately run down by an offroad motorbike on a reserve. On that occasion, I didn’t get much opportunity to ‘confront’ the guy, really though, beyond diverting his attention from my volunteers.

I stood up for a woman who was being harassed in the subway. The guy harassing her began threatening me enough that others on the subway got scared and pulled the emergency lever. Harassing man fled. Cops showed up. Nothing came of it.

A woman’s dog on the beach threatened my family and she and I got into a shouting match.

Couple guys at a club started fighting so me and a buddy jumped in and we each subdued one of them and we all got thrown out of the club.

I could go on.

I coach youth soccer, so yeah, I’ve had a couple of confrontations. Usually I can stop them pretty quickly. It helps that I’m a 6’1" 220 lb male. The worst (or stupidest) one I had was a parent trying to sit on the kids side because there was no shade on the parents side. I told him he needed to move and he refused. I explained to him that only coaches and players are allowed on this side for player safety. He told me he was a coach, so I asked to see his coach’s card. Which of course he didn’t have. I told him he needed to move or the game would be forfeit and I would call the police because he did not have the proper background checks to be near the players. He moved, but moved behind the goal. So he technically wasn’t on the players side. You know like something a 10 year old would do, not a grown ass person.

In my 50s. I’ve never been in a fight. I’ve gotten into confrontations a few times.

First was a guy on an off road trail. I was leading a group and one of em broke down and blocked the trail. Some cranky, leathery old fuck was being a dick about us being in the way. It had already been a stressful moment in a stressful day in a stressful week and I was fucking done and lost it. Couple of the guys had to keep me from getting in his face. I very, very rarely lose control. I wished I hadn’t and In retrospect I can totally see his point. But also he could have been less of a dick about it. And I should have been the mature guy and ignored his gnarled ass. I was 30 something.

Some shitheads were in a car honking, yelling at, and harassing my wife who was trying to park while I was across the street on the sidewalk. I was really pissed and repeatedly yelled at them to gtfo (more or less) until they finally left. I suppose they could’ve had a gun and shot me and that would’ve been a suboptimal outcome… And my wife can take care of herself. So mild regret on that one.

That’s the only times that jump to mind where I actually got really angry. There may have been times I am forgetting where someone was pissed at me or something and I de-escalated instead of escalating.

I would be more careful now. Why? It’s too big of a risk. I spent a lot of time playing out various scenarios and thinking about confrontations when I decided to carry a concealed firearm. It’s a huge responsibility and cannot be taken lightly. I felt morally and ethically obligated to avoid conflict, let alone escalation, at all costs. (ETA: The obvious exception is a case of legitimate self defense where someone intends to harm me or mine)

I no longer carry but it was extremely valuable to spend the time contemplating confrontations and potential outcomes. Even though I’ve never been a hothead (like my dad was) or thought I was some badass, I still realized I should be more careful.

Two major confrontations and zero fights in all these years isn’t too bad but I could’ve handled both better.

I hope to do better going forward.

I have. I used to go to the grocery store the second it opened on Saturdays which was 6:00 a.m… I was at the self-checkout, and it was quiet enough that I overheard a man yelling at a store employee.

I’m not one to eavesdrop, but the second he said, “I can tell by your accent that you’re not from this country.” I chose to intervene. I walked up to him and told him to stop being an asshole. We argued a little, but he backed down pretty easily, and left the store.

My size and build has pretty much stopped all confrontations since I was in my early 20’s and bulked up… All through high-school and college I was the tall really skinny guy. Then over the course of a year I put on 70lbs without changing my waist size.

My tiny wife takes shameless advantage of it (I am 18" taller than she is). She runs her mouth off and then comes and hides behind me.

A few times, but for context I grew up in a sort of biker/trucker social circle and I tend to speak my mind sometimes more than maybe I should. I do try to be a good person though and don’t try to get in anyone’s face unless they deserve it.

I guess the last time was a few years back having a smoke outside a bar. Some guy was aggressively hitting on my unofficial daughter (ex girlfriends kid) which was fine in itself until he started getting grabby with her so I pinned him against a wall and threatened to put him out of my misery. He calmed down fairly quickly after that and left. I’m no badass or anything, I just get irrationally angry when people try pushing things too far.

I worked in the security industry for 10 years, I grew up with a lot of dudes who are now in jail and I spent most of my early 20s in the street racing scene.

So… Yep. Once or twice.

Nothing much I can recall since being 30 but people tend to avoid starting fights with me since school.

I did fight a black belt kickboxer on PCP round the back of Leeds University campus one night but I sort of stumbled into that one in progress.

We’d been to the polytechnic (as was) for their Friday night shindig with a bunch of friends (so it must have been someone’s birthday). One of our friends is notorious for disappearing (he is either a drink Houdini or teleports - we’ve never figured out which one) so two of us took him to the toilet. Despite being 3 floors underground and there only being one way in or out he managed to disappear from there, to parts unknown. So at the end of the night three of us stayed behind to wait at the door to grab him while he left and the other four started off for home through the, now deserted university campus, which, in hindsight was unwise as it was a long way from any roads and not overlooked by anything). Or missing friend didn’t appear so we set off to catch up the rest of the party and walked into mayhem.

A gang of locals had cornered them and they had a friend who they claimed was a black belt kickboxer on PCP (everything I saw supported that idea, although as he mainly used kicks I did wonder if it was more taekwondo) and they were egging him on to beat our friends up. By the time the rest of us arrived, he’d already dropkicked one of the women in the back, before anyone knew what was going on, and kicked one of the guys in the face (he had flashbacks to a previous beating he had at the hands of Combat 18 and ran, jumping over a low wall, only to discover it was a high wall on the other side and he was stuck in someone’s back garden with no way to get back).

I told the two.guys I was with to get everyone out of dodge and I tried to block his path but he wasn’t happy about that so started throwing kicks my way. I blocked them (or I might still be wearing my bollocks like earrings) and then landed a solid kick and a punch which sent him to the ground. He then popped up fresh as a daisy and I realised I might have to kill him to stop him, which is not a pleasant decision to make.

His friends gave chase after mine, encouraging him to follow, so he sprinted off after them and I had to try and catch him up. Fortunately it was a bit of a stand-off and I told my friends to keep going. I ended up with my “dance partner” in a bearhug when one of my friends came up behind me to tell me we all had to go. I turned to talk to him and it was the oddest sight as the kickboxer’s foot was somehow coming up under my armpit and was kicking my friend in the face, he was just too out of it to notice, so kept talking throughout. I made him leave and, by this point, had talked the kickboxer around to believing I was on his side (he was high and didn’t seem very smart at the best of times). So I sent him off in one direction to look for “Them” and I headed off in the opposite direction.

We got back to my friend’s house and Houdini hadn’t returned, so we retraced our steps, worried he might have run into the hoodlums. However, there was no sign of either. As we got back to base Houdini is wandering down the road in the other direction. He couldn’t explain what had happened to him but he’d ended up with strangers and had a pleasant hour or so drinking tea and eating toast. Boy did we have a story for him!

It’s very rare. I make it a point to avoid these situations because of my anxiety.

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