A lot of your examples describe physically violent situations, or at least the threat of one. I also struggle with how to respond. My parents raised me to never

A lot of your examples describe physically violent situations, or at least the threat of one. I also struggle with how to respond. My parents raised me to never engage in physical violence at any cost. I was the scrawny nerd in school and was bullied a lot. My parents encouraged me to talk my way out of these types of things. As an adult, my instinct is to de-escalate verbally and if that fails to withdraw. My wife on the other hand was raised in, how do I say this, a less nurturing environment. Her instinct is to respond to violence with violence. She doesn’t care if it’s a 6’5” club bouncer, she’s down to fight (she’s 5’2” and 110 lbs soaking wet) if she feels threatened physically. We had a situation a while back where a drunken, crazed woman shoved my wife while she was holding our baby. It was completely unprovoked. I got in the middle of them and tried to talk the aggressor down from the ledge. Of course, reasoning with a drunk person is basically useless. The drunken woman then shoved me. My wife knew I wouldn’t restrain the person physically so she handed the baby to me and proceeded to beat this person to the ground. I’d never seen someone get beaten up this badly. All I wanted to do was withdraw, but with this person’s emotional state there was no telling if they would follow us and try to engage physically again, potentially risking harm to our baby. I still don’t know how to reconcile what happened. Like, instinctually, I still think withdrawing was the right choice. But, conversely, there were too many unknown variables in how that could’ve worked out. The best I could do to rationalize what happened is that we all have different reactions to the fight or flight mechanism. I flee, my wife fights. Sometimes maybe there isn’t a “right” answer and it’s all on a spectrum of gray-ness. In the moments after that situation, my wife berated me for failing to engage physically in a physical altercation that threatened our child. I felt an immense amount of shame. In the days that followed, she started to understand my position and reasoning and now says I shouldn’t feel shame. Just wanted you to know that you’re not alone in struggling in how to deal with physically violent situations.