AIBU not to want to hold hands with a strange man in the park?

[Twiceover]

I was in the park yesterday with DCs. They were off playing and I was sitting on a bench in the sun mumsnetting.

An elderly man sits down next to me and starts chatting. I don't particularly want to talk to him - I was enjoying the relative peace and quiet - but I think I may as well be polite. We chat for a while, small talk about his family, where we live, what football team he supports etc. All perfectly pleasant.

DC come over - they want to leave. 'Lovely to meet you'd, I say to the man. 'Lovely to meet you too, I'm Dennis' And he puts out his hand to shake. 'Twiceover', I say and shake his hand. I go to take my hand back. He holds onto it. Awks. He continues to talk to me, now holding my hand. And I...do nothing. Except squirm in embarassment and try and end the conversation as soon as I can so I can escape.

All in all a complete non-incident. Nothing happened. I wasn't upset, just mildly embarrassed and irritated.

And yet now I think why didn't I say something? I wasnt happy with him continuing to hold my hand. I'm generally pretty assertive and direct. I could easily have politely said 'please let go of my hand ' or even quite abruptly 'give me back my hand!' I didn't want to be rude or upset him so I just sat there nodding and smiling politely while he held my hand. But why did my need to be polite and not embarrass him trump my own need not to have my boundaries crossed? Why was I so worried about upsetting someone who was invading my personal space?

So WIBU not to say anything or was it so inconsequential it would have been odd to call him out on it?

I do pt bar work and have no tolerance for male customers I don't know invading my personal space and touching me. Elderly male regulars have been the most disrespectful. I once lived in a city with a massive street harassment problem and so have very little patience for any unwelcome attention and am confident in expressing that as it just became second nature, I think most young women in that city get used very quickly to not giving people the benefit of the doubt. This kind of politeness and reluctance to rock the boat can actually get you in serious trouble in that sort of environment (though I appreciate unlikely in your scenario) - I do have personal experience of this and am not overdramatising.

Why compromise on this unless you also enjoy the connection? He couldn't possibly have sincerely believed that you would enjoy having your hand held by a stranger. What kind of person enjoys touching someone who's just tolerating it? A decent man would only enjoy that touch if he knew it was nice for you too. If you actually made as if to pull your hand away and he resisted that and applied more pressure to hold on, that's not sweet and innocent at all. I would not be embarrassed to say, 'what are you doing? let go of my hand' - it's for him to be ashamed, because there's no way he wasn't aware that this was a totally one-sided thing, namely to give him pleasure.
(If the reaction is: 'he probably just didn't think it through' - well, that's hardly an excuse, 'not thinking it through' could very well also be called 'ingrained disrespect'.)

On another tack, it's a bit patronising anyway not to hold elderly people up to the same standards of behaviour as everyone else - their behaviour does leave a mark, they are as much alive, living in 2018 and privy to its zeitgeist as you are, and to cut them all sorts of slack is a form of social exclusion in itself I think.

Women are socialised to be polite, even at the expense of their own discomfort. Men are socialised to ignore women’s boundries - I very much doubt he would have held a man’s hand like that.

It doesn’t always have to mean something sinister, but it’s there in most of the population.

I don;t think he was necessesarily a 'creep with no boundaries' - that's a bit harsh. Just that his boundaries are different from yours.
And I don't think the Op was a victim - nothing particularly terrible happened to her or was likely to, she wasn't unsafe. Bandying the word victim about diminishes it for people who actually have been harmed by others.

The fact that he was in the park on his own and wanted to chat, indicates he was lonely and craved human contact. I've had elderly people (men and women) hold my hand for more than the 'approved' amount of time quite often. I don't have any problem with it at all, because in the situation i am in with them I judge it to be harmless. With someone I felt unsafe with any contact even for a second would be unacceptable to me. We set our boundaries according to the situation as well as according to our personal preferences.

I am tactile and have no problem with hand holding or even hugging - I often have contact with younger people who are lonely, or in difficult circumstances and they often want to hold my hand or hug me. And that's fine. But I wouldn't want a leery bloke even looking at me, let alone touching.

So I don't think it was embarrassment or patriarchy or anything of that ilk that stopped you pulling your hand away OP. I think it was a quick mental calculation based on the fact that you dodn;t feel under threat and you realised that pulling your hand away would probably have been incompatible witht the situation and the length of time your hand was held. if he'd gone on gripping your hand for 15 mins, I'm sure you would have pulled away. You;d probably have done that kind of 'I'm breaking contact now' pat thing that we do to signal the end of hand touching.

It’s an interesting question. I’m not sure I agree that older generations are generally more tactile than younger. I think it is true that older generations were taught to acquiesce to older people more, and that means that less socially aware or sensitive older people are less likely to consider, or notice, or care, if they’re making someone uncomfortable with unwanted physical contact. Which of those three possibilities is the case is harder to tell though.
But I don’t agree that you should “be kind” and put up with contact you don’t want. One person’s right not to be touched has to override another person’s desire to touch, always. No exceptions. I don’t see why someone being 93 and lonely is any different from someone else being 23 and lonely. It’s just a more effective, harder to argue against way of controlling women’s behaviour by making them responsible for other people’s feelings.

"was it so inconsequential it would have been odd to call him out on it?"

More than likely.

That said you felt uncomfortable, so it would have been best to stop the handholding.

I don't think he meant anything by it, i have had sustained handholding in the past by elderly men and women, I think they want that human touch. But it is inappropriate to do this, and I guess next time just pull your hand away.

KurriKurri he wasn’t on his own. Op said that he was there with his grandkids and was going to meet his wife so far from the lonely old man people are making him out to be.

It is sad that it can stem from intense loneliness yes, so I absolutely don't judge the impulse to touch - but it's a selfish thing to do so I'm just not very charitably inclined on this issue.

Loneliness is a serious social issue, but so is women and girls feeling uncomfortable because they're being touched when they don't want it. Whose interests win here? I wouldn't want to encourage a culture where women are seen as objects to satisfy the emotional and sensory needs of everyone else.

Like others have said, you could have said, 'come on kids, we have to go, and pull your hand away. I think that he was very lonely and wanted that human touch. But it is not appropriate holding a strangers hand.

If he was a lonely old man i probably would have linked arms and hada nice chat about the weather. They need more chess tables and stuff like shuffleboard for the lonely old people. Something easy to organise.

nasty old people were usually nasty young people.

I beg to differ. Pain , diminishing, physical and mental capacilty , fear dementia, illness all take a toll

He may have the beginnings of dementia and not realising he was causing you to be uncomfortable. My mum has the start of Alzheimer’s and she does things like this when she will have a kind of brain blip. I’ve had many older people do this kind of thing also they like to be around younger people, it makes the feel more alive and they reminisce about their own youth. And whilst I agree that loneliness can hit the young and old I think it’s far, far worse at 93 than 23. The chances are that at 93 you’ve lost your partner of around 50 plus years, a lot or most of your friends and siblings have past on and children and grandchildren are off living their own lives.

KurriKurri he wasn’t on his own. Op said that he was there with his grandkids and was going to meet his wife so far from the lonely old man people are making him out to be.

Apologies - I somehow managed to totally missed that (I have RTFT I promise - just woolly headed) ignore my post it makes no sense in the light of that. I stand by my general remarks about lonely people wanting human contact, but clearly they are irrelevant in this case.
As you were

Why are people insisting he was lonely when it doesn’t seem like he was at all from OPs posts?

YABU

You gave the impression of being a friendly woman. THis is clearly a lonely old man. If I had a pound for every overly long handshake I could give up work. some people are just insensitive. He may have no other human contact at all and holding your hand was IT .

Be more charitable and be grateful you have other people in your life to show affection to and receive it from.

Next time just laugh and say ' Hey, I need my hand back!' make light of it.

Not all old people are kind elders,reaching out for companionship.thats an age related cliché
We need to exercise personal preference & situational judgement to events. And teach that to our kids too
I’m afraid being old doesn’t in itself make someone kind or no threat

Maybe after a minute you could have just said in a jokey tone 'hey, can I have my hand back please?' He was probably just a lonely old man though, and perhaps starting to get a bit confused.

You're not wrong to have felt uncomfortable, we're a lot less tactile now than older generations I think ?

Do you think so? I think the opposite. The way young people greet each other by hugging now for instance, I first start noticing this in the 1990s, I think it spread from North America. When I was a teenager in the 70s and 80s, NOBODY hugged their mates, it would have been thought weird.

I do think it's kind of sweet really, but sometimes may not be completely sincere.

Ok so he has a wife and grandchildren.

But you are overthinking all of this. Not everyone has perfect social skills. He overstepped a mark in your mind, but it's not really a biggy.

Next time, just make a joke of it an d pull your hand away.

What a compassionless and censorious people we're becoming. Dreadful.

And you’ve just completely minimised the op feelings & experience queen
No biggie?it was for her,she’s repeatedly said so
She’s not overthinking it if it was significant and caused her discomfort

Yeah lets blame the victim and not the creep with no boundaries

Victim?

Of what exactly?

If he’d been a younger man 25-40yo,holding onto hand too long would that be ok?
Would he be lonely too?seeking human contact & companionship
There are so Big age related stereotypes on this thread. Old = lonely
Ahh,back in his day people were different

I am amazed you have a life so dull or empty that this incident is worthy of a post on a forum.

I think we have all met long handholders. sometimes they are potentially 'dirty old men' or just 'dirty men' or people who are unsure of social boundaries.

It's life. It happens. I guess you are an attractive woman and he liked the bit of attention you gave him.

If it was a handshake that morphed into a handhold, WTF didn't you stand up and move away and if he still clung on, speak up?

It does sound inappropriate, but as my late gran would have said/ You;ve got a tongue in your head, havent you?'

@lipstickhandbagcoffee She asked for opinions. I've given one.

SHE has made it into something huge when in fact it's not.

Are you saying no one can shed a different perspective on anything in life?

Do we all have to agree with someone's?

(Like yours??) LOL

In fairness queen folk post all sort of stuff on mn.Parking doesn’t do it fir me but gets mn aerated
You have no reason to attack the op or her quality of life
You’re simply pandering to all old people are lovely/lonely.just like nana cliches