Neighbour dynamics can occasionally feel like living inside an ongoing psychological study. Most of us want calm coexistence and the occasional friendly chat over a fence, but not a deep dive into social tolerance.
Yet every now and then someone joins the landscape who shifts the entire atmosphere, and suddenly the simplest event like a quiz night becomes a case study in group behaviour. Two years ago my new neighbour seemed fine. Friendly enough. One of them started joining quiz nights when one of our core team was not available. Then their true colours started to emerge. He never offered to drive even though everyone else took turns. He would not walk ten metres to pick up the quiz sheets. He treated the whole thing as a cheap excuse to get out and have a few drinks. Once added to the quiz group chat, he always claimed the first available spot which then pushed others out (max team size of 6 people). And then the incident in the car where he lectured the team captain about reading Trump. That kind of unsolicited political spiel from the back seat of someone else’s car is a perfect snapshot of a person who sees social spaces as his stage.
I adjusted. When he went, I stayed home. That is not dramatics. That is self preservation.
Then came the summer party. I arrived at the same time as him and his wife. He mentioned not having seen me in a while. I kept it polite and truthful; I had been busy, I had been house and dog sitting quite a bit for friends. His wife looked away, a kind of micro expression is often a quiet signal that someone is aware of the tension even if they cannot or will not name it. At surface level, it was polite chat while we waited to be let in, but he wasn’t smiling and his eyes were ice cold…
Another neighbour later said something like “they are part of the community now so we have to accept them”. This is where social psychology steps in. People often favour harmony over accountability. Saying “just accept them” is easier than acknowledging that someone behaves poorly. It is the classic conflict avoidance strategy. If applied broadly it would indeed put Bonnie and Clyde on the Neighbourhood Watch committee, just because they were now living down the road…
It is completely natural at this point for me to wonder “is it me”? But the pattern of behaviour I have observed is consistent, repeated, and impacts my enjoyment of my own social time. That is enough. Boundaries are about protecting my experience, not about proving guilt in a court.
People do not see things the same way for a range of well documented psychological reasons. Some people smooth over conflict to keep group harmony. Some become desensitised to difficult behaviour because it develops gradually. Some prioritise the appearance of community over the reality of interacting with someone unpleasant. And some simply do not reach the same threshold of irritation because they are not the ones being pushed out, lectured, or overshadowed.
This is the same psychology that explains why workplaces tolerate the colleague who dominates every conversation, why families endure the relative who brings up politics at dinner, or why WhatsApp groups keep the person who derails conversations even when everyone quietly rolls their eyes. Most people choose passivity. One person chooses distance. The one choosing distance is often treated as the odd one out simply because they acted first. At some point, because he’s always friendly and likes to be involved, I could well end becoming the “bad person” – but that won’t worry me. Quality over quantity and self respect are more important to me.
Do I have to tolerate him? No. Communities are voluntary. Attendance is voluntary. No one earns the right to my company by merely existing nearby. I am allowed to skip Christmas drinks if the vibe is unpleasant. I am allowed to remove myself from situations that drain me. Psychology calls this avoidant boundary setting. It is not avoidance of responsibility. It is avoidance of things that go against what I believe in.
I don’t feel that my reaction is either extreme or unreasonable. It’s a just a national response to multiple episodes that showed me exactly what to expect from him. While others may be content to shrug and say “that is just how he is”, I do not have to sign up for that subscription.
Sometimes the most emotionally mature move is simply choosing not to participate. That is not hostility. It is peace.
To dig even deeper into the psychology of all this, there is a well known concept called the “free rider” problem. This is where one individual enjoys all the benefits of a group while contributing as little as possible. It is common in economics, workplace projects, and apparently local pub quiz circuits. My neighbour clearly approached quiz night like an all inclusive holiday resort where the only expectation was to arrive thirsty.
There is also social loafing. Research by Ringelmann showed that people put in less effort when working in groups compared to working alone. His original experiment involved participants pulling a rope. In my modern neighbourhood example the rope has been replaced with the quiz sheets, which apparently weigh as much as a small family car since he could not be bothered to go and pick them up – plenty of women in the team to do that.
Another useful framework is the Big Five personality traits. I find this helpful, not because I am trying to diagnose anyone, but because it explains why some individuals slide into group settings like butter and others crash in like a shopping trolley with a squeaky wheel. Low agreeableness mixed with high extraversion is a lively cocktail, but not necessarily one anyone asked to drink.
From a humour perspective I often think friendships and neighbourhood relations function like airline boarding groups. Group A is the natural easy fit people who glide through. Group B is the pleasant filler. Group C is the chaos. And Group D is the person who stands blocking the aisle insisting they should have been allowed on earlier because their hand luggage needs its own locker My neighbour is Group D energy wrapped in a Group A smile.
There is also the principle of least interest. This little gem of social theory suggests that the person who cares the least about group coherence often ends up with the most influence, because everyone else bends around them to avoid friction. When someone behaves badly others work overtime to compensate, tolerate, or excuse them. In effect the group does all the emotional heavy lifting while the difficult person floats merrily along like a tourist on a lilo at a Disney theme park.
The irony is that by quietly removing myself from the situation, I am practising what conflict management theorists call the strategic retreat. It is not surrender. It is simply saving my bandwidth for people who can hold a conversation without lecturing drivers on Trump or treating the WhatsApp list like a Formula 1 starting grid.
There is humour in all of this too. Every neighbourhood has a cast list. There is always the helpful one, the gardener, the curtain twitcher, the quiet one, the DIY evangelist, the “borrowed a ladder in 2021 and never returned it” one, and if the universe must spice things up, the one who believes quiz night is a performance art piece starring himself. Sociologists would call this emergent role differentiation. Most of us would call it F%^&$£”& P*%£”&^%.
The clincher is that humans are tribal. Not in a spears and paint way, but in a “we like to keep things smooth even when something is objectively annoying” way. I fall outside that smoothing impulse because my threshold for nonsense is calibrated differently. That does not make me wrong. It makes me someone with functioning boundaries.
And finally, in the spirit of academic honesty, I acknowledge that Wilfred Bion, who studied group behaviour extensively, noted that groups often operate under unconscious assumptions that lead them to tolerate disruptive individuals simply to maintain an illusion of unity. If only he had been alive to witness the modern suburban quiz night. His theories would have written themselves.
In conclusion, my stance remains simple. I do not owe my social energy to anyone who treats communal activities like their own personal pub crawl, nor do I need to bend to the collective conflict aversion of neighbours who prefer surface harmony to meaningful boundaries. If choosing peace means choosing absence, then I am simply practising personal emotional logistics.
Have you come across any similar situations?
