Training for Dominance/Conflict

[Anonymous]

My question: how do you train/practice to deal with conflict situations if you don't encounter them much?

Background:
I had an interesting experience tonight....I was out at a house party, chatting up a beautiful girl. I poked around to get her relationship status, didn't hear anything about about a boyfriend, and plowed ahead to asking her out. I asked for her number, she turned me down, but keeps chatting, and a few minutes later a guy comes over and drags her away. As I'm leaving, I circle around, talk to her, ask her to coffee again. When I do, this guy, now standing next to her (I'm now guessing her boyfriend) says angrily "Did he ask you out again?"

My reaction was stand planted, ask him if that was a bad thing; he says yes; I pause a moment, then tell the girl it was lovely meeting her, and leave. Inside, I got an adrenaline surge and fight-or-flight shut DOWN my ability to think. For me, flight often wins in these situations, so while I didn't fold like a lawn chair, I don't think I came out on top here. NOW I can say a better response would have been to address the challenge from the guy more directly - shift my focus to him, make him explain his problem (and why he's speaking for the girl, who hasn't said anything to my comment), then handle it from there - if I crossed a line, acknowledge it, or shut him out of the conversation and return to the girl. Trouble is, I encounter these situations rarely, so I have difficulty staying calm and thinking rationally, and my instincts just say get OUT of there.

Back to the question - does anyone suggestions for training or building better instincts to manage these kinds of situations? I'm in them so rarely, I'm not sure how to retrain my reflexes and learn to suppress/wait out/think through the adrenaline and social pressure I feel.

 

[Altimeter]

RELAX. You're human, he's human. You can easily knock him unconscious or kill if necessary, all it takes is a single blow.
if it bothers you start training self defense, it'll boost your confidence.


THing is, she wasn't all that into you in my opinion. She let herself be pushed away because she was probably giving the desperate 'I need evac' look.
I know that look, if she kept chatting to you, that was because she was kind enough to not embarrass you in public with a rejection.

 

[Anonymous]

Good point, Altimeter - the girl is not the loss here.

My question was more about how to practice coping with unexpected, emotion-laden situations. There's a lot of great stuff on the site about how you deal with difficult situations (like having an angry guy call you out in front of your friends). But it's one thing to have read about this situation, and another to remember what you read in the heat of the moment (when your brain is going to mush).

Whatever the answer, I was curious who else has struggled with this and how they've worked through it.