Over the years, every time I have told somebody they are in danger, they don't want to hear it. But it happens. And so I'm going to impale it on your minds even more. Here are just a few stories from the recent past:
1. A woman in Amsterdam was accused of stalking her ex-boyfriend for allegedly calling him 65,000 times in the past year. After he filed a complaint with the police due to the excessive calls, the police arrested the woman and she argued she had a relationship with this man and didn't see her calls to be excessive. The man denied them ever having a relationship.
2. A British man bombarded his ex-girlfriend via email and Facebook messages asking her to take him back. He set up a series of blogs warning people about her. He was finally jailed for admitting he violated his restraining order.
3. A dumped lover in the Bronx hired his own cousin to kill his teenage girlfriend and tried to cover it up as a botched robbery. He paid his cousin $1,000 to shoot the teenage girlfriend. The ex-boyfriend warned if he couldn't have her, then nobody could. The girl was found shot dead with their baby in a car.
Those are just some of the thousands of stories. When people get vengeful, they get obsessed; the ego can't take the bruising and they want to control. There are some people who are unable and unwilling to let go after a breakup.
At first it seems they are, obviously, emotionally hurt. That's understandable. They call, they visit, they keep arguing and try to reconcile. Well that all sounds reasonable. Then they're following, stalking or threatening. Then they vandalize belongings, which escalates to personal violence, and maybe even killing the partner's pets. If this isn't dealt with and gets extreme, there can be kidnappings and killing of children, as well as murder and/or suicide. This "obsessive-ex" syndrome is rampant. Media usually report it by breaking it up into little pieces describing individual incidents only when they reach an extreme, instead of acknowledging the overall picture. This obsessive-ex syndrome is not gender specific. It usually doesn't just go away. Over one million women and 300,000 men are stalked annually in the United States.
Stalking by definition is not a onetime act. The course of conduct may involve a whole bunch of criminal acts. Taken one at a time they're annoying but there definitely is a pattern. Here's a list of some of the stalking behaviors for you to look out for:
1. Assaulting the victim
2. Violating protective borders
3. Sexual assault
4. Vandalizing your property
5. Burglarizing your home
6. Threatening you
7. Killing your pet
8. Sending "forever" cards and gifts
9. Leaving telephone or email messages for you again and again and again
10. Disclosing to you personal stuff that they have found out
11. Telling a lot of people personal stuff about you
12. Following you
13. Going to your work or school...Just showing up
14. Sending photographs of you without consent
15. Monitoring your Internet history and computer usage
16. Using technology to gather images and information about you
This can be potentially fatal for you. One of the reasons they do this is because they perceive you as weak and they say they want you back, but really it's their ego that needs saving. It's too dangerous.
