In a CS thread about three years ago, I asked the above question and never really got an answer, so I’ll try it again. Particularly, I’m interested in learning (from those who have been stalked, or have suspected they were being stalked) if the stalker had been someone you considered attractive, would you have considered it to be stalking or just “This cute guy/girl I’ve been seeing all the time who has a little crush on me, I think–isn’t that sweet and exciting and stimulating etc?”
IOW, is stalking (in all but extreme psycho cases) in part dependent on one’s own perceptions of the person doing the stalking? In the original thread, I suggested that all sorts of romantic quests would have a strong element of stalking to them, except for the perception that the object (usually a woman ) of the quest appreciated the effort being made to pursue her, even in the initial absence of overt encouragement.
Stalkers refuse to give up. A normal person may get a romantic attachment, but if they find out the person is not interested (for any reason), they give up and move on to someone else. A stalker thinks 'Oh, you don’t mean that. I can make you love me. I’ll do whatever it takes. You’re married? Well, I’ll get rid of your spouse." Stalkers do not accept defeat.
In one extreme case I saw on television, a woman went out on a couple of dates with a guy while in high school. He continued to constantly contact her through the rest of high school, while she was in nursing school, and after she was married. When she had a baby, he insisted “I’m the father.” Eventually, the laws were changed, she got a restraining order, and he violated it. He went to prison, got release with the condition he have no contact with her, and immediately started leaving messages on her voice mail! When they interviewed the guy, he insisted he was the victim “Look at how she’s treating me.”
In short, stalkers are delusional, unable to accept the idea of anything less than having the one big romance with the person they’ve selected, regardless of whether that person is in agreement with the idea.
Yes, I was stalked by a reasonably good looking guy who wanted to marry me. I finally got a restraining order, and he immediately got transferred to another state and married a 17 year old.
I have a cyberstalker, who found me through another message board. It started out when I tried to give her friendly advice about her bad marital situation, and it turned into her constant phone calls, attempts to dominate every moment of free time I had into e-mail sessions, and everything Annie mentions in the second half above.
I moved recently, not because of her, but I did try to leave her a cold trail in the process.
I had a stalker in college. I was at the local community college in the summer; I always took extra classes. I remember him, he was a tall handsome Arabic man. His name was Fahdi but he went by Fred. Anyway he followed me every where and memorized my schedule some how and always showed up. Bad enough, but I reasoned he was going away to school in the fall and I was only going to SUNY New Paltz so I onyl had to deal with the summer, right?
Wrong. He showed up at SUNY New Paltz in the fall. And again I was in for a semester of being stalked. Luckily it was very mild, it never extended beyond him following me or finding my classes or coming up behind me and touching me - not quite inappropriately, he always kept his hands to my shoulders or arms.
Finally I started dating this Indian man around November or so…that relationship bloomed, flowered, and died in the space of a month but it was enough for Fahdi I guess. He left that winter and I didn’t see him again. Presumably he went to his other schoool.
I am glad I never had a “real” stalker relationship, like Annie. I am glad I was lucky enough to avoid that. I can’t imagine the stress and fear.
Very shortly after my divorce, in fact after I separated but before the divorce was final, I met a woman on-line. We began to chat and agreed to try a “friends with benefits” relationship. It could not have been more clear that it would only be FWB. I was freshly single and she was finishing her degree and planning on moving out of state.
We had our evening together and then it started, five phone calls and ten to fifteen emails a day. She would get upset if I didn’t respond to all of her emails or if I responded only with a short response. She drove me nuts. I finally had to tell her that she obviously had feelings that I couldn’t reciprocate and that we would only be friends with no benefits.
The phone calls and emails wouldn’t stop. She would call me crying sometimes and cussing me out sometimes. Then she would apologize and say that she was going to leave me alone forever. That would usually last a week or two.
One day she found my profile on a dating site. She signed up for the same site, made a fake profile with fake pictures and wrote to me as if she was someone else who was interested. After a few emails back and forth, I realized it was her right before we were supposed to meet and ignored all future messages. The emails from that profile grew increasingly hostile until I blocked her.
Two months later, she did a similar thing on Yahoo Messenger but I knew it was her immediately and called her on it. She claimed to be joking and that she knew that I would know it was her.
The latest from her, and this happened just a couple of weeks ago, was that she found my profile on myspace and wrote to all nine woman on my friends list to “warn” them about me. She again created an entire fake profile with pictures of someone else to do this. She wrote a huge diatribe about how I was scum and used women and not to trust me. All but two of them were platonic friends who know me well. They thought that it was hilarious. One of the others was someone I have yet to meet but we have been doing lots of flirting and may meet soon. It actually got her to be more interested in me.
It’s been nearly a year and we spent one evening together. What the fuck is with people?
In the thread I referenced, Annie, what interested me was that in both books, the “hero” refused to accept defeat. Iin one case, when he found out his object was married he literally said “Can’t change the past? Of course you can”, and in the other case, his love-object told him to go away, because she couldn’t see him anymore ever–in both cases, the persistent heroes eventually won the girl, which I found stalkerish. The reason they weren’t perceived as stalkers, I wonder, is that the girls secretly enjoyed the attention–their lips (at first) said No, No, No but they eventually came around.
I had this happen to me my first year of college: a guy from high school, who had been creepily interested (stalkery?) in me, found out what school I was at, thanks to a well-meaning friend, and decided to email me. The school’s email setup was ‘firstinitiallastname@schoolname.edu’, so he wrote to what he thought mine would be. It was like no time had passed (it had been 2 years), with the ‘I miss you’ and ‘I love talking to you’, EEW EEW EEW. So, I pretended to be someone else, a man, to which he responded (this is a paraphrase): thats ok, we can be email buddies too! I’m just looking for this girl who was my soul mate, we will be together someday, its our destiny. My pretend self then blocked his addie. That was 6 years ago, and I still get creeped out when I hear this one pop song that has his name in it.
Yes, I was stalked by my ex (the guy prior to my husband). The police ended up involved, a restraining order was issued, he violated it a few times - he would stand outside my house at night tapping on the windows and stuff - he’s gone from the area now, though. It’s been ten years - I really don’t like talking about it much.
Feel free to email me if you want to know anymore.
It was decades ago, in high school, but I was stalked by a really homely social outcast girl. I didn’t even realize it for a long time, and had felt rather sorry for her because she was such a creepy misfit that she had no friends.
That was, apparently, my first mistake.
She seemingly interpreted my absentminded kindness toward her as undying love. We started getting hang-up calls at home, my locker-mate kept finding “gifts” taped to our locker, etc. It wasn’t until the other guys on the swim team noticed that she’d started attending all our meets – home and away, that I started putting the pieces together.
So, for the rest of senior year, my friends and teammates had to run interference. She’d creep close to us at lunch, shadow me through the halls, try to get into the lockerroom, and in general made my skin crawl every moment of the day.
The year later, someone caught her secretly taking photos of me at the homecoming brunch. Then, she transferred to my college and looked to be ready to continue her creepiness. Fortunately, she disappeared, to where I know not nor care.
However, I learned not to be friendly to creepy misfits. Probably a bad lesson to have learned, but there’s no way in Hell I’m willing to feel hunted by someone again.
I had a stalker. It happened when I was playing in a band in NY and NJ. He came to ALL the shows. From NYC to Altantic City, he was there. I would cringe when I saw him. I don’t think that he really cared about me, I think he was off his meds.
He imagined that we had a history. We didn’t. Sometimes he thought that he was my boyfriend, my husband, sometimes he thought he was my brother. He got my phone number somehow, and would call me at home constantly. Even after being told to stop he continued. I changed my number several times. He was very sneaky in how he obtained information about me… He always wanted to give me things. He knew where I lived and would leave various items on the porch or just stand outside waiting for me to come out. He would also leave drawings that he drew at the places that I frequented. Sometimes the drawings were violent, mostly depicting me.
This lasted for maybe 2 years. It was very hard to get a restraining order as there was no previous relationship (except in his mind). Eventually I got one, and he went to jail. I think he was picked up for vagrancy (he left his wife and became homeless during this period) and they gave him time served with the condition that he never contact me or my friends or family again. He never has.
I would not want to start any relationship with a person who when told “I’m not interested” would respond “Oh, yes you are, or you will be.” How much proof do you need that the person is controlling and delusional.
That’s one of those little tropes that sustain everything from bad romance novels to bad romantic comedies. Kind of like how the sexually active girls always die in horror movies; in real life, they’re not any more likely to get killed than their virginal counterparts, but this particular fiction requires sexual activity to be punished. The one you’re talking about requires the hero to persevere and the target to eventually realize how great the hero really is.
Real-life stalking, even when executed by someone good-looking, is a very different situation. The closest I’ve come was when I was an intern working for an outfit that took art, plays and concerts to public parks. This one guy would always, always be at every single show and would try to walk me to my car. He’d stand there and stare at me while we tore down each exhibit (twice a day, with some evening shows). It made me nervous and he kept showing up and trying to talk to me even when I told him point-black that he made me uncomfortable and to please back off. Then he showed up at my apartment – he’d written down my license plate number and gotten my address from the DMV.
The burly man who did most of the set-up started escorting me to and from my car, and eventually my boss called the police. The police visited creepy guy, told him to knock it off, and that was that.
A woman who worked for my ex was stalked by the father of her freshman-year roommate. At the time I knew her, this had been going on for 10 years, through multiple restraining orders, moves and phone changes. On Valentine’s Day she received a box from him which contained a teddy bear. All of the stuffing had been ripped out, its eyes were torn off, and the note pinned to its chest said, 'Thinking of you." Creepy as all hell. Security guards at the office escorted her any time she left the building after that.
Was stalked by an ex about 10 years ago. He refused to accept that we weren’t going to be together anymore. He would call my house numerous times a day, would sit parked outside my home and would follow me if I went anywhere. After I started seeing someone else he stalked him too. I finally had to take legal action and thankfully it finally stopped.
I think people who are in “public” like a band are more likely to get stalked. I have close friends who are in a band that is starting to get more and more of a following, and some people are crazy intense about coming to all the shows, talking to them,etc. Good for business but sometimes I wonder what the really intense ones are hoping to get out of it, for some it is more than just liking a band and having a good time. They will come up and talk to them after shows like they are old friends.
It must be because when you see someone in the public eye, you can find out all these things about them and feel like you know them. You see them a lot. So sometimes they forget that the public figure does not know them back. That’s one reason I think celebrities really do have to put up with a lot even from well-meaning fans, and then the more famous you are the more attention you attract from the crazies as well.
A case of the extreme in stalking is Richard Farley and his stalking of Laura Black. She went to lunch with a group of co-workers that included him. That was it. He stalked her for four years, saying he would ony stop when “she lets me ask her out and she accepts like a normal human being.” When she got a restraining order, Farley went to her job and killed seven people and wounded three others, including Laura.
Laura wasn’t famous, and she did not encourage the guy at all. But he would not let go. How flattering is that?
For sure! I hadn’t experienced that depth of crazy up close and personal until then. The delusional aspect was especially frightening to me. Who knows what a person will do?
One was a fellow at my high school. He threatened rape and a bunch of other horrible stuff, it was awful. The police were quickly called in on that one.
Another was an ex who turned out to be insane. He would literally follow me around with a cap pulled over his eyes and a scarf covering his face, thinking he would be able to “disguise” himself. He was creeeeeepy.
For the most part though, it’s been relatively harmless internet stalking (like hacking into email accounts and private forums to get information about me, but not doing anything with that information) and generally being creepy, calling at all hours, bombarding with letters and emails, etc etc etc. Something to get angry about, nothing to call the cops over.
I was stalked by a guy who used to frequent a bar I worked at. He turned up a couple of times when he knew I’d be working and would prop up the bar and stare at me. He eventually decided that he’d ask our bar manager, who was a big hulking ex-rugby player, if I’d go out with him. Bar manager, being the sweetie that he was, drew himself up to his full height and demanded why stalker had been eyeing up his girlfriend, and that if he didn’t bugger off right now, there’d be hell to pay.
Unfortunately, that didn’t stop my stalker. He found out which college I attended, and managed to blag his way into a few of our college-only events. Where he’d follow me around in the college bar and common room area from one room to the next. Which, understandably, freaked me out. However, as I didn’t know his name/have a picture, it was hard for the college porters to bar him from entry. The crunch came one evening, when he was in our college bar and common room, and was really freaking me out. Our head porter was in the college bar, and saw me getting visibly freaked out. A friend of mine went and got him and pointed out my stalker. Our head porter, a wee Glaswegian and ex SAS (or so it was rumoured, about the SAS bit anyway), went up to my stalker, who was about 6 foot tall and well built, lifted him up, and pinned him against the wall, and told him that he was absolutely, no way, under any circumstances, welcome back in the college, and if he did, the police would be called. Funnily enough, he stopped stalking me after that.
You know, if I had read this in a James Patterson novel I’d have written it off as trite. But in real life? It makes chills literally run down your spine.