As someone who has been to a few handfuls of concerts, I've run into my fair share of rude audience members. At some shows, if I'm standing next to someone who's being rude, I'll just move away. But at concerts where seating is assigned, if you're stuck next to a drunk couple who won't keep their mouths shut, you're caught in a pretty sticky situation.

Take my experience earlier this month, for example. My best friend Gabi and I had tickets to see Fitz & The Tantrums and Young The Giant at San Diego State's open-air theater. Seats were assigned, so wherever our ticket said was where we were going to sit.

Fitz & The Tantrums opened for Young The Giant, and as both of us were fans of them, we wanted to catch as much of their set as possible. We walked down to our seats and were sat next to this couple, each of them looking to be around their mid-30s. I smiled at the wife as I took my seat beside her.

For a song or two, everything was just peachy, until I began to hear the couple chatting next to me. They weren't talking about the opener, the music, or anything that had to do with the concert at all, and they were very loud. It was difficult for my friend and I to pay attention to the band on stage when these two were yelling their conversation right next to me.

I'm sure we've all been in that situation where we're at a concert and we just don't care for the opening act, so we just talk to our friends to pass the time. I understand that to an extent, so I didn't do anything about it. I figured I'd just check in with the couple later to make sure they wouldn't talk so loud during Young The Giant, the band who we were mainly there to see. Because as ridiculous as it seems to talk during the headliner of a concert, it's happened in front of me before, and it can ruin a whole show.

After Fitz & The Tantrums finished their set, every body in the amphitheater took their seats to wait for Young The Giant. I turned to the couple and asked them - in the most polite way possible, trust me - if they could not talk during the songs when Young The Giant come on. It's a simple request, right? Much like watching a movie in a movie theater, it's distracting trying to pay attention to what's on the stage when people are talking right next to you. It's definitely a huge pet-peeve of mine.

After I asked them if they could not talk during Young The Giant's songs, the wife looked at me and said, "We're actually here for Young The Giant, so..."

Her tone definitely wasn't pleasant, but all I said was, "Okay cool. Just making sure."

The rest of the brief conversation went like this:

Her: "And we paid money for these tickets, so if we want to talk, we will."

Me: "But it's distracting."

Her: "Well just pay attention to the music."

Me: "It's hard when someone is talking next to me."

Her: *Shrugs condescendingly* "Sorry."

I sat back in my seat and let it go. The husband got up to get them more drinks at the bar. I could see the wife texting her friends about me out of the corners of my eyes until her husband came back. When he did, he switched seats with her so she wouldn't have to sit next to me. Cute.

When Young The Giant came on stage, they hadn't even gotten 30 seconds into their first song when Gabi leaned over to me and said, "I love his outfit!" referring to lead singer Sameer Gadhia's printed pants and yellow t-shirt. Before I could nod in agreement, I felt the husband swat me with his hand from my right.

"No talking during the concert," he hissed mockingly.

I stared back at him with a "ha-ha, good one" look, and then turned my attention back to the musicians on stage. Nobody likes a hypocrite, so I planned to keep my mouth shut for the rest of the concert.

A few seconds later, the husband leaned over and saaid to me, "If you're going to be a f*cking, c*nt, then leave."

To say I was shocked was an understatement. Did a grown white man really just call me the C-word because I asked him politely to not talk during a concert I also paid money to be at? I thought that stuff only happened in movies or something.

I asked him if he was serious. He said "Yeah, you're being a c*nt. Don't talk to my wife that way."

I was so unsettled that I just had to laugh a little. Gabi stepped in and told the man off, and they went at each other for a good 30 seconds. I'm lucky she had the courage to tell him because I didn't.

I realized then that there was no point in trying to salvage these seats. There was no way in Hell I was letting us stand next to this guy for the rest of the show, so I told Gabi we needed to leave.

I flipped them off, called him an a**hole, and grabbed my stuff. The man, with a gleam of pride in his eyes, told us to "have a good night, ladies."

If something like this happens to you at a show, don't let the person win so easily. Tell a security guard or somebody working at the venue. We reported the incident to a security guard, who called her supervisor, who called his supervisor, and so on until four different employees walked down to the couple and asked the husband what was going on.

At one point the husband tried telling the guards Gabi and I were on drugs, which nobody even believed (because we weren't, obviously).

Unfortunately, even though the venue staff believed our side of the story, they technically couldn't do anything about it because they didn't see anything go down. Luckily the show wasn't completely sold out, so there were plenty of open seats in our section of the crowd. The staff invited us to take any open seat for the rest of the show and stay away from that man.

The couple got to stay in their original seats, and I was pissed I let them get away with it. I was flustered, a little scared, and I felt like our whole night was ruined. I only hoped the amount of time the two of them had to talk to four different guards was enough to ruin their night, too.

All we wanted was to have a good time, and now I was running around trying to find two open seats with shocked tears in my eyes.

When we finally found an open row of seats on the other side of the amphitheater, Gabi and I had to take a minute to calm down. I used this moment to channel my inner DBT brain. DBT stands for Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, and it was the basis of treatment in my eating disorder program.

The central idea around DBT is dialectical thinking, which involves viewing issues from multiple perspectives. In DBT we're taught that there are multiple truths to everything. Dialectical thinking helped me fix my problematic "all-or-nothing" mentality.

In that moment at the concert, I needed to get out of that state of mind. So instead of thinking, "That guy harassed us, therefor my entire night is ruined," I thought, "That guy harassed us, and I'm still gong to have a great night."

Applying the magical word "and" to the statements we make in our heads can help train our brains to think more positively and accept the situations we are in.

Though I was still pretty mad I let a man call my friend and I the C-word at a concert, there really wasn't anything I could do about it. And as frustrating as that was, sometimes that's just the way things happen. We can't always have control over a situation or have the last word, even when we so desperately want to. I'm just glad I'm not that guy's wife.

If you're wondering how the rest of the night went, Gabi and I had fun and we still bring up that guy every time either of us needs a laugh.

The moral of the story is, just don't talk during concerts, man. You see what happens when you do?

Cheering, singing along, and making comments about the performance is one thing, but talking loudly over the music about something completely unrelated is just rude to the people around you. While I think it's important for people to enjoy themselves at concerts (especially in seats they paid for) it's also important to remember that those sitting around you paid for their seats, too.

Just be courteous to the people you're near, and nobody will get hurt. Or called out by a misogynistic A-hole.

Thanks for coming to my TED-Talk.