Bit of background:
I'm 22, partner is 24. We just bought our first house about 8 months ago. Have been living there since. We are in a semi detached house. Our neighbours purchased their house about 3 months ago and have only started living there about 3 weeks ago, they had builders getting the house ready for them I suppose- it's a new build.
Anyway, we only met them for the first time on Tuesday last week. We pulled up in our car, got out and they were outside doing their garden. We stopped to introduce ourselves and had a chat. The neighbours are in their mid/late 40's if I were to guess. The guy did most of the talking, telling us how he had Crohns Disease, and how terrible it was. Also mentioned the fact that there were weeds growing in-between the bricks on the parking. He mentioned that one day it would be nice for us to all chip in and get this cleaned. We agreed happily, bearing in mind we have never noticed the weeds and upon closer inspection, it seems to be small amounts of moss, but really nothing noticeable.
Anyway, we went inside, I told my partner I thought he was a bit weird, and we moved on. Then on Friday, I was off uni and home alone, and heard him screaming (semi-detached house) and lots of banging. I ignored this and carried on my day. Heard nothing again since and hadn't seen him again.
On Sunday night, my older brother came to stay the night. He parked his car in the neighbours spot (we have two spaces each) which I hadn't realised, and my brother was not aware that the house had been purchased, as it was empty last time, so he didn't do it to be horrible. Anyway, I wasn't aware that he had parked there.
An hour after he had arrived, there was knocking on the door. I ran downstairs and opened the door, saw it was him and smiled. As I opened, I noticed my brothers car so I clocked why he was there, and before he said anything I said "oh sorry, I'll move the car for you quickly" (I assumed that's what he was there for). He then looked at me and very aggressively said "oh so you've done it on purpose"
Me: "No, I'm sorry I hadn't realised, my brother has parked there but I've got the keys I'll move it quickly"
Him: "listen to me, I can tell when people are being genuine with me and when people are trying to make me look stupid, and you are purposely trying to make me look stupid"
Me: I'm sorry, I'll move the car.
I shut the door, and my boyfriend came running down shouting "what was that" and tried to get out, I begged him to leave it as I hate confrontation. My brother at this point was having a shower and was completely unaware of the situation. I grabbed his keys, shaking, and asked my boyfriend to stand at the door as I moved the car.
I went outside and he started having a go at me again. He then told my boyfriend that what we were doing was illegal as we are aware that he is ill, and we are causing him stress. He also told him that were we leave our bins was illegal, and we were to move them. My boyfriend said no calmly, they are on the side of our house on a piece of land that belongs to us, not in anyone's way. He then asked my boyfriend if he wanted to have a boxing match, to which he replied no. I was moving the car at this point but could hear it all. He then asked if we wanted to throw all our weeds at him?? I got out the car and they were talking to each other (neighbour screaming at boyfriend, boyfriend talking). I begged him to go inside and leave him alone, went in and locked the door and broke down in tears.
I know it was nothing serious, however I as a person am very sensitive and hate conflict, I really do. I spent the next 15 minutes sobbing and shaking, I was completely shaken by what had just happened. On top of this, my little brother (9) was there too, we were having a little sleepover.
10pm, someone knocks at the door, it's his wife. She says she's come to clear the air, not apologise but clear the air. I looked at her and said "are you admitting he's in the wrong if you've come over to clear the air?"
Her: "No, you've both put him under tremendous amounts of stress recently, you don't pull out your weeds and there's constantly leaves blowing from your garden to ours (we don't even have any trees in our garden, definitely haven't got ANY leaves??!). So tonight was just the final straw. We've paid a lot of money for this house. We want it to look nice.
Me: could he not have come over and explained what we were doing wrong so we can try and fix it? We will always help if we're doing something wrong
Her: He didn't do anything wrong to you
Me: He did, and I have the whole thing recorded on my cars dashcam (I do but unfortunately you can't hear anything, you can just see it happening).
Her: well ive just come over as I want us to be civilised neighbours.
Her behaviour quickly changed.
I said goodnight and closed the door.
We are extremely quiet neighbours, we don't listen to music, we are asleep by 9:30 for goodness sake. We mow our lawn twice a month and rake up all the spare grass. No we haven't de-weeded our car space, I admit.
Does he have a problem or is this normal? Are we in the wrong? There really isn't more to this story unfortunately, it sounds like we've had some issues in the past for him to react like that but we'd only met them once before!
On a side note, when they were building and not living there, we always took in their parcels and put notes in their door to say we had them with my mobile number. They never came and I eventually dropped them off in their secure porch and let them know through a note in the door. They were big boxes and we didn't have space for them. They also left a big concrete slab lying in the middle of the path and my elderly granny came to visit and feel over it, and hurt herself badly. They aren't aware of this but I just accepted that they probably didn't mean to leave it there on purpose, and moved on..
Sorry for the long post however I'm still really upset about this for some reason and feel really scared to leave the house every time.. I feel genuinely intimidated.
Thanks in advance for any advice to fix the problem, I don't want it to happen again