A question, in the abstract. Forget Travis and the for the moment.
A fellow, let's call him John, has been tangled up with a sociopathic ex-GF he just can't seem to shake, partly because she refuses to let go, and partly because he hasn't been able to cut her off himself. For whatever reason. Doesn't matter why for this scenario.
John's friends have warned him for months, flat out, that she is: sick, seriously mentally ill, scary, dangerous, obsessed, manipulative, and a liar. All quotes.
He thinks she's slashed his tires, twice,and the tires of the woman he considered marrying. He knows she's invaded his privacy a thousand times over. On her way out of town she messes with his PPL accounts, destroys his BMW, and writes a good bye in his private journal.
Within a few weeks of her leaving, he realizes another of his journals is missing and pleads with her to return it. She denies she took it. He's already kinda sure she took the first. He catches her in her stupid twisted lie about spies telling her what she obviously found out by snooping, perhaps even tailing him (he's told friends he often had the weird and bad feeling she was watching him, even though he couldn't see her).
She tells him directly that she used to drive around and around his house every night, and that on many nights she had snuck in and slept on his sofa, slipping out in the AM before he woke up.
She begs him to come visit him, he asks why its so important to her, she doesn't give him a straight answer. He could easily go; he was in CA one one occasion but declined to visit her then. He had no plans for Memorial Day, but declined to visit her then either.
After she leaves he feels relief at first, then increasing anger after he realizes she is still messing with him. Her intrusions become more frequent and more bizarre. She accuses him of hacking into her SM. She pretends to be someone else on Linkup, and tries to entice him to a hook up in Utah. She signs him out while he's on MySpace, over and over and over and over.
He holds her partially responsible for the loss of his almost -fiancee. In Mid-May the only other prospect he has lined up for marriage before he's forced out of the single ward bails on him; in talking with her he finds out she didn't receive an important email he'd sent her.
He increasingly confides in friends about his ex, what she's done and is still doing. His confidantes are universally creeped out and tell him that. After catching her as MariaM, he backs away from her, big time. No more contact until she confesses, in writing.
His ex contacts him on the 25, tells him she has to tell him something that involves the 2 of them, and that one part is so incriminating she refuses to put it in writing.
He's angry about what she tells him, because he has 2 years of pent up fury, because he realizes she's never told him the truth about anything, because he believes she hates him and has tried to destroy him on purpose. He tells her for 2 hours how evil he thinks she is, how much a *advertiser censored*, how much a liar. He tries, desperately, to get her to admit she's slashed his tires, stole his journals, isn't sorry.
Perhaps he tries one last tactic after 2 hours, and tells her he's addicted, never mind everything he's said. Perhaps he really means it. Either way, he gets on the phone with her immediately after saying that to her, telling her- just say you're not sorry.
Does she say that to him? No. Does she admit to anything? No. She spits in his face by sending him an email within 3-4 minutes absolutely denying the tires or journals, the very transgressions he is most positive she's lying about. In those same few minutes he tells her he is done.
He doesn't initiate contact with her again. He responds by phone once, and only once, after she's harassed him for hours to talk with her about "somethings" she needs to tell him. He responds to her odd texts several times- texts that he may well have read into that were related to May 26 and talk of a lawyer. That's it. Whatever she tells him in their only verified phone contact after the 26th, it isn't that she's coming to visit him.
He thinks she's 1000 miles away, and has no reason to believe otherwise. He's restless and can't sleep for several days after their May 26 confrontation, but that's in part because he has decided that he too must come clean, with his almost-fiancé, no matter how difficult that is.
He thinks she is 1,000 miles away. He doesn't return her calls or text her on the 3rd. He stays up until after 4AM on the 4th and goes to sleep.
No matter when or how he wakes up, no matter where or when or how she ambushes him in his own home, how could his first response NOT be anything other than fear? How could he NOT have flashed back on all his friends' warnings about her? How could he have-- and why would he have- in that moment, or the next, or the next, put aside what he had thought of her on the 26th and even before, as after May 19th he routinely referred to her as psycho?
THAT moment, the moment of ambush, is IMO the beginning point for any reasonable interpretation of what happened on June 4.
And it forms for me the near certainty, IMO, that whatever happened for the rest of the day was based on fear, not flattery or manipulation or forgiveness or denial or amnesia.