One of the most common ways of dealing with moments of feeling in the firing line is to run. If someone makes you constantly uncomfortable, or a space seems unwelcoming, then what incentive is there to continuing to frequent that space or talk to that person? In my previous research, people regularly told me they would disengage with people that took aim at them. Or, they said, they wouldn’t let these people get close to them, cutting them off from certain parts of their life, limiting the amount of information they had, or otherwise minimizing their interactions.
