Self esteem is not about the outside at all; it's about your relationship to you inside, all the time. Are you good friends with yourself? Do you see what your husband and mother-in-law see in you? That's the kind of thing that makes up self-esteem, being able to see, not that good things happen TO you, but YOU, yourself, the good and bad and all the other facets of your wonderful self.

When I read your simple story of what happened, I didn't see the second comic as rude, I saw him as perhaps jealous of the ease/manner the first comic had and of YOU for seemingly being able to chat with people easily. It's my understanding that lots of stand up comics have more than their share of personal problems :-) and/or rejection (it's very hard to succeed in that field) and I would feel badly for your second guy, that he might be feeling bad about himself (or thinking YOU did!).

But what other people are feeling about themselves OR you is not something you can do anything about or really care about, it's what you feel about yourself and what you are doing and thinking and feeling. Turn your negative feelings into "pity parties" and carry them to extreme; go to a joke/magician's store and get some rubber crap and slam it down on the table with a loud, "I feel like crap!" when you do :-) Our feelings are to inform us about ourselves and kind of steer us.

If you are afraid, you look at why and try to "fix" what is scary to you. When my husband use to go away on business trips overnight, I'd have trouble sleeping, sure that bad guys were going to break in and rob, murder, pillage and burn :-) For several years I struggled with going to sleep around 3-4 a.m. (after they had gone home and it was "safe" to sleep I guess) and took the next day off work or went in tired, etc. But I finally realized that if I kept the lights on in the living room and make it "look" like my husband was just up later than I was, reading, working on his computer, or watching TV, I felt better and could fall asleep because it was more like it "normally" was for me.

Look at your feelings seriously and see what's "really" there. Mine mostly come down to anxiety and feelings of helplessness (my mother died when I was 3). So when I have a feeling that doesn't seem to "fit" a situation, I look at what it really is about. My husband being away was what I was having trouble with, not the robbers and murderers. I worked to make myself feel better, more comfy and secure and did it myself. When I get road rage, not something I normally get, I look and see what is making me anxious. I don't like feeling anxious or helpless and get "angry" instead so when I catch myself being unreasonably angry or antagonistic, I look to see what I've "lost" or feel helpless about.

When you were talking to these guys you were "alone" in that you decided to talk to the first comic and approached him yourself, your husband didn't go up and you with him, following? I suspect you feel insecure in yourself, unsure that you'll say the "right" things or get a response you can handle, etc. (that is what I am like). If your husband or a friend had been with you, you might have said when you turned away, "how rude!" but you don't trust yourself and your own opinion enough to accept that how YOU feel is valid! You felt he was rude but you want the "world" to have a standard of this is rude/this is not, only it doesn't work that way.

Get to know yourself and what you like and don't like, what you believe and feel and that all of that is okay, it's "You". My favorite movie for that is Julia Robers in "Runaway Bride". The "egg scene" is what you have to do!