With the amount of random attention from men women get, the rate doesn't have to be very high for it to be regular, particularly when you add selection bias that people who react like that are probably more likely to approach someone in the first place.

And while I would agree it's probably higher than 1%, 1% really sounds lower than it is - that would be 40 million people globally. If it's 5% it's 200 million and there are still almost 4 billion that are completely normal.

The sad reality is that it just doesn't take high numbers for that kind of experience to be a regular occurence.

Hell, even in healthy relationships. I noticed my husbands mental health was getting rough, so I tried to bring it up. He got so defensive so fast, tried to flip it on me when he got panicky.

We talked that incident out, but people seem to generally just get defensive about sensitive things all the time, like reflexively. Unless you've done extensive inner work, it's how it goes. How many avoidants walk this earth christ