My friend HATED their first rave and I feel guilty about it
I’m sure most people on this subreddit can agree when I say raves are fun and they’re something to be passionate about. The music, the community, the dancing. I wanted to share this interest of mine with a friend that likes EDM so we went to a small rave for their first time. They aren’t a party person at all but they were still interested in going.
They hated it.
We left very early. They thought the whole thing was sketchy, a bad place to be and advised me to never seek out one of these again. They said it made them uncomfortable and it was a bad idea and that this would be their last time at anything like this.
But this rave was VERY, VERY tame. About as wholesome as a rave gets. It was a very small, last minute event. Nobody bothered us, in fact, most people were just standing there listening to the music, swaying from side to side. I was one of the few people actually putting an effort into dancing. (The vibe was unusually mellow because the original rave got cancelled and rescheduled very last minute in the middle of the week so most people didn’t end up going and the ones who did seemed a bit disappointed) This place was definitely not sketchy, no one creeped on us. There weren’t any annoying drunks or weirdos either. We weren’t even in a bad area either.
I’m so disappointed because I was really looking forward to spending time with them. I was excited about going to a small little rave. I don’t even know why they agreed to come if they were going to be so against it. I guess they just thought clubs, raving etc is automatically a bad thing regardless of what you do there and your intentions. I feel like I put them in an uncomfortable position or that they are going to judge me now and think of me as some reckless hedonist. I care about their opinion of me. I felt judged. I don’t want this experience to reflect poorly on me even though I don’t think I did anything wrong. I figured they might be a little bit nervous at first or sketched out due to their personality and beliefs but I thought they would ultimately have a good time.
What do you guys make of this? Should I apologize to my friend? What should I say to them? Was I in the wrong here?