I really am big enough and ugly enough to see myself home

[Youknowaboutthepaint]

I'm a single middle aged woman. I have a wide social circle and a busy social life, friends of both sexes.

After an evening out there is always a "discussion" about how I'll get home. I live with walking distance of our regular pub and of the station if we've been further afield.

I am perfectly comfortable walking home by myself. In fact I'm just back from a trip where I walked 120 miles all alone. However, my friends don't want to "allow" it. The men will insist on seeing me home, sometimes women even make their husbands walk me home! It doesn't matter how much I tell them I'm fine, they insist and come anyway. Sometimes this means I'm walking home alone with a man I barely know - statistically I'm probably safer alone.

I know they think they're doing the right thing but surely a woman should have the right to make these decisions herself?

I’m the same OP. Thankfully my friends have got used to my insistence that I’m fine walking home alone. I will compromise by texting them when I get home if they are in need of reassurance (by which time they’re normally asleep so it’s rather pointless but it makes them feel better as I wave them goodbye).

I'd had the same. To the point where drunk people insist on driving me home... like that's a safer option.

In my single days 25+ years ago I would sometimes walk home from the pub on my own, and sometimes someone would be nominated to 'see' me home. Quite often it was the blokes who were more concerned that I got home safe than the women. To be honest, I appreciated their concern, and if they didn't think it was safe for a woman to walk home on her own late at night, well they probably knew more about the local ne'er-do-wells than I did. I don't ever remember turning their offer down flat.

I wouldn't walk home on my own at night now though. Times have changed and this area has changed too.

Be careful with this. I can see both sides of this discussion but I don't agree. I was confident enough to do anything alone. Was not able to fight off. Did need the help of passing cars.

Very lucky, very rural.

Also accept the statistics about those known to you, in my case they were not. And agree about choice.

However we have not been there. I'm not sure. If someone cared about me so much they wanted to make sure I got to my door, where do I live? How drunk am I? Do they walk me home after a cup of tea? Do I need to look at that?

I get it, OP. People seem to think I'm completely incapable of knowing my own mind about what I want to do. I'm a very self sufficient person and quite enjoy the peace and thinking time that walking alone provides. It's very annoying when people refuse to accept your decision, and whatever risks that may accompany that.

omg, there are better hills to die on

Than women having their own agency?

However we have not been there. I'm not sure. If someone cared about me so much they wanted to make sure I got to my door, where do I live? How drunk am I? Do they walk me home after a cup of tea? Do I need to look at that?

If you're old enough to go out socialising and getting drunk then your old enough to get yourself home.

How would your friends feel if something bad happened?

Hopefully they be sympathetic but know it wasn't their fault.

Pretty sure I’ve seen this exact same post before.

Just say 'no thanks, I'll just text you to let you know I'm home'. Or, as it's been going on a while, 'I feel really bad making you go out of your way, so in future I'll just text you that I'm home'

Continuing with the manipulation I see …

We’re all responsible for our own feelings and actions. If your friend wants to walk themselves home and isn’t incapacitated, then that is their choice, and in the highly
unlikely event something happened, you wouldn’t not have anything to feel bad about.

Women spend far too much time worrying about the feelings of others. When it comes to your own life what matters most in the end is what you think. Also, good friends respect their friend’s agency.

WTF? Your DH doesn't get to decide if someone is "allowed" to walk home without him.

I used to think like this, was very much like I can walk myself home and nobody is going to stop me. However I was walking back from work one night around 11pm, turned down from a busy street onto a relatively empty street (the entire walk was less than 10 minutes from work to my house) and 3 men came running up behind me. Literally shit myself and since I knew I wouldn't be able to outrun them I just went into freeze mode and sat down. They gave me a really strange look as they ran on past and I realised they were running to try and catch the last train. So I was totally safe, but it scared me enough that I got a taxi after that. Women should always be able to walk anywhere alone and be safe, but that's not the world we live in and it's fine until it isn't.

I am 100% with you OP. I think maybe you should have a conversation with your friends at a time when you are all sober and the issue of which of their husbands is going to be nominated to escort you isn't present and tell them how you feel about it. Lay it out. Say you don't want to keep arguing with them about it and you want them to accept your choices. I also really really don't want someone's boring husband accompanying me on my walk home. I have had friends that have made these sort of scenes about insisting that I text them and so forth and I refuse point blank to engage. It doesn't happen any more. I don't get the "text me when you get home" thing because these people wouldnt actually do anything if you forgot to text so its meaningless. I also use the technique of just getting up and saying goodbye and leaving before they have the chance to demand that they know what's best for me.

Im sorry you have had that experience and that its changed your view about how safe you are but it still doesn't mean that other people get to insist that they accompany the OP when she chooses to be alone.

Yes - when asked if she wants a cup of tea and/or biscuits.

It’s great you feel like this. I’m just thinking… I don’t think I have ever walked home on my own in the dark. Like ever. I’m 43.

I crap myself walking from my office to my car, it’s a private car park and probably a distance of 70 foot. Same with train stations. I clutch my bag as if life depends on it and run to my car in the station. Nothing bad has ever happened to me, I thought most women felt like this. But I suppose I’m one of life’s worriers. I envy your confidence.

I envy your confidence.

The OP doesn't have the confidence to insist she doesn't want company on her way home.

To the point where she says, "Sometimes this means I'm walking home alone with a man I barely know".

Perhaps her friends can see this in her and it's partly why they worry so much about her insistence that she'll be fine.

Of course that still doesn't give them the right to make any decisions for her, but it doesn't sound as though the OP is anywhere near as insistent with them as she is on this thread if that makes sense?

I’ve become firm enough in how I answer that it’s unusual for anyone to offer now which is how I prefer it.

It annoys me that people think OP should be grateful. She’s allowed her own boundaries, even if they’re different to hers. It’s all well and good asking her to think how her friends would feel if a stranger assaulted her (as if this should even be her first thought if she was assaulted) but think how those friends would feel if their partner assaulted OP walking her home. That’s statistically more likely. Or how guilty OP would feel if her friend’s partners were assaulted/murdered walking back alone from walking her home. Men are at high risk of being assaulted and killed by other men but we never act like men need to have somebody escort them home, it’s just women who have to put up with impositions on their movements.

I come from a culture where we are brought up to consider others. We are humans after all and need each other. But you do you and I’ll continue to surround myself with kind people who care about each other.

I come from a stance where I respect people when they tell me they don't want me to do something for them and I don't try and emotionally manipulate them into doing something they don't want to do just to make me feel better. But you do you.

I haven’t experienced this but I would HATE it. So patronising and weird they don’t listen when you say you’re fine to walk home on your own.

This has happened to me enough times that I started doing a "French exit". Just told one friend I was leaving in case anyone missed me and slipped out to avoid loads of fuss about how I was getting back. Only works when in a big group somewhere busy though.

I'm in my 50s, and I've hardly ever been walked home. There was one point where a group of us tended to walk together because we lived in the same direction, but the last bit was alone. And I have had a group of drunken colleagues walk with me to the station, but that's also because the taxi rank was that way.

If people insisted on walking me home, old probably say yes out of surprise. But on the rare occasions I have been asked how (without an offer,) I have just said, "I'm walking, it's not far." No one's ever insisted i should be accompanied. I don't drink, so maybe that makes a difference?

God, how bloody sanctimonious