Long story, but I had to go and view a rental property recently. The estate agent, who I had no interest in at all (I'm happily married, and even if I wasn't, uurrrrgghhh!), made his designs clear with lots of appreciative comments, a kiss on the cheek when I arrived and when I left, and invitations to meet him for coffee.
I feel as though any sensible person would have made their boundaries clear somehow, but I am like a rabbit in the headlights with this sort of thing. In the immediate moment, my automatic reaction is to do or say whatever the other person wants to see/hear (within reason!). So instead of telling him to get fucked, or finding a polite but firm equivalent, my responses were:
Converted the kiss on cheek into a continental-style greeting, thus duplicating the crime but hopefully reducing its intimacy
Enthusiastically agreed to coffee "one day" while having no intention of ever going (or, frankly, ever dealing with him again)
Thanked him profusely for all his help!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Smiles and kisses, etc!!!!!!!!!!!
Anyone who has read this far would naturally assume I'm a teenager with no experience of life. I'm actually pretty long in the tooth (60s) and have experienced so many bizarre and testing circumstances that behind closed doors, I am quite confident of my ability to understand things clearly. And I don't think I'm particularly daft (although family might disagree). But with this kind of situation, I behave like a 9-year-old who has never been warned not to accept sweets from strangers.
If you can relate to this, and have somehow managed to overcome this tendency, I'd be really keen to know how you did it. Or, if like me you find these habitual patterns of behaviour hard to break, WTF do you think is going on?! I could cite, of course, the usual weird childhood, abusive first marriage, etc... but you'd really think I'd be able to manage this sort of thing by now. I feel an overwhelming sense of shame because in other areas of life I trust myself to be reasonably competent, yet here I am being pathetic. I read accounts on here of strong women sticking up for themselves and feel I lack some essential ingredient, without which I can only deal with the world by closing myself off from it.