I went to comfort my grieving neighbour and left feeling violated
Yesterday I visited an older neighbour whose partner recently died because he called saying he wasn’t doing well.
I’m 29 and he is around 65. I didn’t really want to go, but I felt sorry for him and thought he probably just needed someone to talk to. I’d also like to point out that I’ve taken the deceased woman to the hospital several times while she was alive and did grocery runs for them sometimes. So he was no stranger.
While he was crying about missing his partner, he touched my thigh several times. Stroking my thigh… I kept sitting further and further away, even put my bag between us…I wanted to say “stop touching me” and just couldn’t.
I have past trauma from being molested as a child from someone very close to me and I tend to freeze or people please when men cross boundaries. I hate it because in my head I know exactly what I want to say, but sometimes I just cannot get the words out.
Then he said he cannot be alone and wants to find a young woman to live with him. He offered for me to shower at his place because I don’t have a bathroom (currently renovating) then offered for me to move into one of his properties because “everything would be free”. I kept saying no.
By the time I left I felt completely disgusted. He gave me the rest of my coffee in a travel mug and told me to keep it so I could remember him when he dies. I threw it away on the way home, washed myself under my garden hose and later blocked his number.
I think what bothers me most is that I went there purely out of kindness because his partner had just died, and I left feeling violated and angry with myself for freezing, even though I removed myself from the situation, it doesn’t feel like I did enough to stop him.
Am I overreacting, or was this as creepy and predatory as it felt?