9 Tips for Coping With Stalkers
Sam Vaknin’s tips for coping with stalkers – including abusive ex-husbands or ex-wives – will help you and your family stay safe and sane!
“Your abusive ex-husband or ex-wife is likely to cope with the pain and humiliation of separation by spreading lies, distortions, and half-truths about you and by proffering self-justifying interpretations of the events leading to the break-up,” says Vaknin. “By targeting your family, your children, boss, colleagues, co-workers, neighbors, and friends, your abusive ex-husband or ex-wife hopes to isolate you socially and force you to come running back, and to communicate that he or she still “loves” you, is still interested in you and your affairs and that, no matter what, you are inseparable.”
Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self Love – Narcissism Revisited – click on the book image for more info. And, read on for his tips for coping with stalkers, abusive ex-husbands, and abusive ex-wives.
Quick Tips for Coping With Stalkers, Including Abusive Ex-Husbands or Ex-Wives
- Be sure to maintain as much contact with your abuser as the courts, counselors, mediators, guardians, or law enforcement officials mandate.
- Do NOT contravene the decisions of the system when you’re coping with stalkers. Work from the inside to change judgments, evaluations, or rulings – but NEVER rebel against them or ignore them. You will only turn the system against you and your interests.
- Do not respond to your abusive ex-husband or ex-wife’s pleading, romantic, nostalgic, flattering, or threatening e-mail messages.
- Return all gifts he or she sends you when you’re coping with a stalker.
- Refuse your abusive ex-husband or ex-wife entry to your premises. Do not even respond to the intercom.
- Do not talk to the stalker on the phone. Hang up the minute you hear his or her voice while making clear to him, in a single, polite but firm, sentence, that you are determined not to talk to him.
- Do not answer your abusive ex-husband or ex-wife’s letters.
- Do not visit the stalker on special occasions, or in emergencies.
- Do not respond to questions, requests, or pleas from the stalker, forwarded to you through third parties.
- Disconnect from third parties whom you know are spying on you at his or her behest.
- Do not discuss your abusive ex-husband, ex-wife, or stalker with your children.
- Do not gossip about the stalker.
- Do not ask your abusive ex-husband or ex-wife for anything, even if you are in dire need.
9 Specific Tips for Coping With Stalkers, Including Abusive Ex-Husbands
1. Don’t discuss your personal affairs. When you are forced to meet your abusive ex-husband or ex-wife, do not discuss your personal affairs – or his.
2. Don’t meet him alone. Relegate any inevitable contact with the stalker – when and where possible – to professionals: your lawyer, or your accountant. To cope with stalkers, protect yourself with mediators.
3. Keep your distance. If at all possible, put as much physical distance as you can between yourself and the stalker. Change address, phone number, email accounts, cell phone number, enlist the kids in a new school, find a new job, get a new credit card, open a new bank account. Do not inform your abusive ex-husband or ex-wife about your whereabouts and your new life. To cope with stalkers, you may have to make painful sacrifices, such as minimize contact with your family and friends.
4. Be prepared. Alert your local law enforcement officers, check out your neighbourhood domestic violence shelter, consider owning a gun for self-defence (or, at the very least, a stun gun or mustard spray). Carry these with you at all times. To protect yourself from the stalker, keep them close by and accessible even when you are asleep or in the bathroom.
5. Protect your computer. Is your computer being tampered with? Is someone downloading your e-mail? Has anyone been to your house while you were away? Any signs of breaking and entering, missing things, atypical disorder (or too much order)? Is your post being delivered erratically, some of the envelopes opened and then sealed? Mysterious phone calls abruptly disconnected when you pick up? Your stalker may have dropped by and may be monitoring you.
6. Notice any unusual pattern, any strange event, any weird occurrence. Someone is driving by your house morning and evening? A new “gardener” or maintenance man came by in your absence? Someone is making enquiries about you and your family? To cope with stalkers, recognize when it’s time to move on.
7. Teach your children to avoid your abusive ex-husband or ex-wife, and to report to you immediately any contact. Abusive bullies or stalkers often strike where it hurts most – at one’s kids. Explain the danger without being unduly alarming. Make a distinction between adults they can trust – and your abusive ex-husband or ex-wife or stalker, whom they should avoid. To cope with stalkers, involve your family.
8. Ignore your gut reactions and impulses. Sometimes, the stress is so onerous and so infuriating that you feel like striking back at the stalker. Don’t do it. Don’t play their game, because they are better at it and will likely to defeat you. Instead, unleash the full force of the law whenever you get the chance to do so: restraining orders, spells in jail, and frequent visits from the police tend to check the stalker’s violent and intrusive conduct.
9. Don’t resort to appeasement. The other behavioral extreme is equally futile and counterproductive. Do not try to buy peace by appeasing your abusive ex-husband or ex-wife. Submissiveness and attempts to reason with him or her only whet the stalker’s appetite. The stalker regards both as contemptible weaknesses, vulnerabilities to exploit. You cannot communicate with a stalker or paranoid because he or she is likely to distort everything you say to support his or her persecutory delusions, sense of entitlement, and grandiose fantasies. You cannot appeal to a stalker’s emotions – he or she has none (at least not positive ones).
Do you have any tips for coping with stalkers? Please comment below…
This article was reprinted with permission from ”Malignant Self Love – Narcissism Revisited“, by Sam Vaknin.
Comment by Cattie on 10 January 2009:
Im separated and both of us living in same foreign country.My spouse has been very distractive manipulative and self absorbed.His threats to me of destroying me leave me scared of returning home of which is a less secure country.He brags to my relatives how he knows powerful agents and is influencing in status. Some believed his side of story but after continued drama,they think he is sick and dangerous .His employer loks the other way/hands off even when it is obvious he is stalking or abusing me emotionally. He tried all means to defame me , denied all abuse and planned to send me back to my country by convincing and processing my return tickets thru his employer.I refused to thru my attorney and the host State immigration retained me here due to my security and I got no other livelihood back home.
Question is, can he really hire somebody to murder me with a 100$ as he used to scream at me ? I miss home but I dare not risk.
Other Qst: His employer dos not think of him otherwise and they have been very unsupportive or trying to save face for the company. How do I convince them that my ex is sicker than he portrays himself in public?
Comment by Cattie on 10 January 2009:
Give me tips on how to expose my ex- cruel actions before I go insane. My self esteem is sometimes very low with hopelessness every time he stirs my peace. Hardly 10days go by before an absurd thing is centre staged between us ( manufactured orchestrated by him ; Im always on the reeiving end}.
Comment by Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen on 11 January 2009:
Cattie,
It sounds like you’re in a very scary situation – especially being in a foreign country! The most effective way to convince his employer that he’s as abusive and threatening as he is, is to show them evidence. That is, if they heard or saw his threats, they’d be convinced pretty fast that he’s a potential stalker and abusive, too. But, that may be hard to do.
If I were you, I’d take the return tickets home! As hard as it would be, I’d find a new way to earn money at home….because personal safety is far more important than living in fear.
Can your employer or some other supportive network (even your country’ Embassy) help you out? You need to talk to someone where you are, to get protection and a plan of action.
Good luck, Cattie. And don’t let it get too late, like it did for Jaye above.
Best wishes, and feel free to write again,
Laurie
Comment by Jerry Pera on 17 July 2009:
As a private investigator, I must say that this list is right on the money.
If you know of anyone in the State of Idaho, USA, who is dealing with a stalker (or a third party), my investigations firm can help gather the evidence needed to obtain a restraining order, harrassment charge, and any other relevent legal proceedings.
Comment by Laurie PK on 17 July 2009:
Thanks for your comment, Jerry. Coping with stalkers is scary stuff, and I’m glad this list offers accurate info!
Comment by Light on 11 September 2009:
In order to convince anyone of anything, legal or otherwise, is a simple situation of documentation. Documentation is the save all in a stalking situation. Documentation can very quickly turn the tables on someone who is stalking you. Documentation always holds up in court. Documentation is factual by nature. If you are a victim of stalking, get a video camera and/or a microphone. Documentation is the most aggressive form of self-defense. Documentation can procure reparations in the form of monetary reimbursement in the court of law due to the illegal, criminal, felonious actions perpetrated by a stalking criminal.
Comment by Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen on 11 September 2009:
This is great advice for coping with stalkers — thank you!
And remember that documenting a stalker’s attempts to contact or disrupt your life can include text messages, emails, phone messages, and human witnesses. Even keeping a journal or diary can be an effective tip for coping with stalkers, because it provides a running account of contact.
If you’re coping with a stalker, please contact the police, a lawyer, or legal aid. Don’t ignore the attempts to harrass you — the sooner you take action, the better!
Comment by yssebelle on 15 September 2009:
girls below the age of 18 shouldn’t date a guy over 20, unless he doesn’t show narcisisitic behaviour, such as drug abuse in young men, druggies tend to become abusive and specialy those who’ve been abused themselves. I was 17 wen i discovered my bf at the time was stalking me, al the signs of sudden break ins were there. I saw him jumping over my wall. Stalking Is not a joke, the dark fear that comes with it is destructive, never mind the stalker. Never try and fight back, this only makes you look stupid especialy when he makes you a fool in front of everyone but denies his own sick fantasy that you had to endure. In the end he gets away, but you leave broken and destroyed. Get the law involved. Stalkers have no feeling for his victims, he just can’t handle the fact that his ‘feel good supply’ wants him out of her life.