Quote Originally Posted by PassiveFlower View Post
I hope you guys can give me some advice and guidance. I live across the road from a council estate in the UK and there is a tower block from where you can see into the house I am staying in.
How is this relevant to the rest of the explanation? Do you think someone is spying on you from there?

A few days ago a man accosted me on my way to work (I walk to the station) and asked me if I was single and wanted to go out for a drink. I don't do these situations well - I know I should have just told him to get lost. But I mumbled something about not being single. He said he had been watching me and always saw me on my own.
Accosted carries strongly negative connotations. Did he simply approach you, or was he actually impeding your path or something like that?

I was a bit freaked about it, but thought it would be ok. This morning he was waiting again and insisted on walking all the way to the station with me. He told me is name and a bit about himself and I (stupidly) told him mine. It seemed rude and churlish not to. I refused to give him a phone number. He keeps saying he just wants to go out for a drink and he is a widower and wants to make friends and likes the way I look.

Anyway, I am a little freaked out. On the one hand, I know people meet in all sorts of places and maybe he is just a nice guy who is asking me out for a drink. On the other hand, what if he is not such a nice person. I don't like the fact that he is watching me. It makes me feel creeped out. I am scared to tell him to get lost, because I still have to get home at night and I have to walk past there.

Am I being silly and oversensitive, or am I being typically submissive, not wanting to hurt someone's feelings by telling them where to get off, or am I in danger. I don't know what to think.

Hope you can give me some clarity
Thanks
Here is what I think is probably the situation; The guy probably works, lives, or frequents somewhere in sight of where he approached you, so he's been seeing you walk to work. So lonely guy sees cute girl going by on a regular basis, decides to try to ask cute girl out. He lies about just wanting to be friends, as that's the standard 'please don't lose interest just because I want to get into your pants at a later date' line. Cute girl gave half-hearted rebuff, so he decides to try again. Guy makes progress on second attempt, so he'll try a third time (what does he have to lose?). Now flip the situation around for a second. Say you are lonely girl. How do approach a guy that you see walking by frequently to express interest? Would it differ substantially from what he did?

Reading what you wrote, I get the strong impression that you are one of a sizable chunk of women who have imaginative paranoia. They feel very vulnerable and exposed and let their imagination run away with their fears. As such, they tend to perceive situations and risks to be much more dire and ominous than they really are. They constantly worry about bad scenarios, regardless of how unlikely the scenario is. Real life examples: She wouldn't walk with me through 20ft of low grass because she was afraid there might be a snake (personally, I would be more worried about stepping in dog shit). She freaked out that I walked the 15ft from my car to her apartment while carrying $500 in my pocket, saying I could have gotten mugged (it's not a bad neighborhood).

If you want to get him to stop, I'll echo what the prior posters said: Be firm and explicit in your lack of interest. Don't leave any room for doubt. If he still persists at that point, then you may have something to be worried about (or he may just be a lout).