Yeah, me too.

I decided to write this when a police sergeant smirked at me.

Things had hit the point with my stalker where my friends were urging me to go to the cops: psychotic, frenzied e-mails were being sent to them on a routine basis, and death threats were starting to rear their heads – things like “I know where you live” and “I can't wait until I'm dead” were being posted in the public forum for a comic I write; "I'm going to wring her neck" for a friend of mine, "I wonder which one of us society would miss more" in another forum. Weird, spooky stuff.

So I went to see the cops, just to see what they might recommend, and I got the smirk.

If you're reading this, you're probably a guy with a problem. Several problems, really, and one is that while women being stalked by men is usually seen as a grave concern, men being stalked by women is commonly regarded as a cute novelty.

It's not. Stalking is a terrible thing to go through. Even when there's no credible physical threat, it's still something that intrudes into every aspect of your personal life.

One of the most frustrating things about this experience is that I know if I were a 32-year-old woman walking into a police station and telling them that somebody was harassing and threatening me, it wouldn't get me a smirk.

This is something I'm going through for the second time – from the same person. I wanted to set this page up to hopefully give you some hard-won advice and pointers about this whole deal.

First and foremost, though, there's one golden rule you need to remember. This will come up again and again. 

Your stalker is mentally ill. 

Stalking is not healthy, well-adjusted behaviour. I can't tell you how important it is to remember that. Normal rules of logic and decency do not apply, which is one of the things that make this so hard to deal with. Your stalker is mentally ill. Write that down and stick it on the fridge. Seriously.

There are a few phases you may well go through while coping with this. Here are a few of the things I've experienced:

1. This is cute/amusing/flattering.

If you're reading this, you're probably past the cute/flattering stage. But that's usually the early reaction – wow, this girl really likes me. You might even get that fleeting I'm the MAN! feeling, because, hell, this woman is literally THROWING herself at you. You must be some sort of awesome mega stud! Well... sorry, dude. Your stalker is mentally ill. Remember that? It's true. You just happen to be at the focal point of all her crazy. She could be collecting eight thousand Cabbage Patch Kids or keeping 78 cats in a one-room apartment or chasing Tom Cruise down a rainy street holding a dead housecat screaming Tom it's our bayyyyyyybeeeee!. She is not sane, and you drew the short straw on this one, chum. She's fixating on you rather than My Little Ponies or home decorating shows. The sooner you get through cute/flattering/I'm the Man, the sooner you can move on to ... well, crappier phases, but it's all part of the road to restoration.

2. Maybe I can reason with her / yell at her / get her to stop.

At some point, maybe when your parents start getting phone calls at 3 a.m. or your female friends start getting e-mails that say things like is he fucking you with his filthy cock? you may feel the urge to drop by this person's house and give them a right royal yelling-at. Getting pissed off – even tooth-grindingly furious – is perfectly normal. And you might think “if she knew how much this was hurting me, she'd stop. She says she loves me, right?” Well – here it comes again – your stalker is mentally ill. Again, normal rules do not apply. On Planet Sane, the yell-at-her strategy might bear some fruit, but here it will do no good. 

Any fuel feeds the fire.

Don't assume your stalker has an ordered approach to relationships with “plus” and “minus” columns. What she has is a seething pile of crazy. Positive feedback -- “yes, you're awesome, but we just can't be together” will be read as he loves me forever and knows I am his soul mate and we will live in a magic cloud castle. Negative feedback -- “you are batshit crazy, stop this” will be read as he can't acknowledge his true feelings for me but his passionate response indicates that he loves me forever and knows deep in his heart that I am his soul mate and we will live in a magic cloud castle... or he is the devil and has conspired a vast conspiracy against him we hatesss him my precious we hatesss him.

Obviously I'm exaggerating for comic effect. But seriously, any fuel feeds the fire. Even if she sends you tangible threats to life and limb and you actually succeed in getting the police to take you seriously, any fuel feeds the fire. A visit from the police or a restraining order might work... for a while. But it will cement the mania in the end. The cops are just part of your undying love or your global devil conspiracy. Your stalker is mentally ill. Rational thought does not apply.

3. What's wrong with me?

Yeah, this is a tricky one. Because probably, the person stalking you is somebody you've had some sort of relationship with in the past. So if you're a decent human being, at some point you're going to hit this soul-searching maybe-it's-all-my-fault thing. Did I lead her on? Did I break up with her to harshly? Maybe if I'd been nicer to her when we split up. Maybe if I'd done a better job trying to stay friends. Maybe I was a jerk. Maybe ... hang on a minute there, amigo. Your stalker is mentally ill. Stow the guilt. If you're feeling like this is somehow your fault, look around. You've probably broken up with people before. You're probably had people break up with you before. Are you stalking them? Is every single one of your exes behaving like this? Are any of your friends' exes behaving like this?

Don't feel guilty. Your stalker is mentally ill. If you feel like this is your fault, get some perspective on regular human behaviour. If in every other post-relationship you can see there is no stalking involved, then you are not the one exhibiting unusual behaviour. You got a bad spin of the wheel when you dated this person, but what's happening now is not your fault.

4. When will this stop?

Maybe never. Sorry. The fact of the matter is, the law is weak in matters of harrassment. If your stalker is clever enough (and just because somebody is mentally ill doesn't mean they're stupid) to not do anything that directly threatens your life or property, there's really very little they can do. Again, this is where being a man hurts your case remarkably. If a woman complains of threatening behaviour from a man, action will be taken. If a man complains... eh, not so much. As much as we like to think we've licked sexism in our society, it's still a driving force – women are still cast in the role of being both helpless and harmless, needing protection and incapable of posing a threat. Nothing is further from the truth. Women are, happily, just as capable as men of achieving whatever they want and defending themselves both mentally and physically. They are also, unhappily, just as capable as men of inflicting harm, both psychological and physical, on other people.

And your stalker is mentally ill, and any fuel feeds the fire. There's no way to make them stop – even if they take things to the level where you can involve the police directly, all the police can do is essentially wag a finger at them and tell them to knock off all this stalking nonsense. In my case, stalking persisted over two years, three moves and a few address changes. Friends and family, and even total strangers that lived nearby, were harrassed. Batten down the hatches and wait for the storm to pass; take comfort in the fact that you have good friends and loving relatives who are willing to support you. 

5. Hey, she's sort of making sense now. Maybe that was just a phase.

Do not believe it for a second. Trust me on this one. 

Even if your stalker shows you her #1 Sane Person Head of the Class Totally Mentally Stable Gold Star Certificate from the Completely Stable Institute of Very Not Crazy People, avoid her. The sad news is that your stalker is mentally ill. Even if she has sought therapy, found somebody else, “moved on,” she has a history of mental illness and you might trigger another round of craziness. In the words of the Big Lebowski, "The god damn plane has crashed into the mountain!"  There is no going back to the wreck. Walk away and keep walking.

If your stalker suddenly seems to “snap back” to sanity, apologizes for her actions, and wants to pursue a “normal” friendship, you can say "congratulations" to the air,  privately wish her well in your head and send good vibes her way, and not contact her, because any fuel feeds the fire. Even if she feels that she is now stable, she's just one tiny step from wait he loves me after all and we will have seventeen beautiful babies and live in a cave made from candy floss and moonbeams oh how we hateses him my preciousssss.

I cannot stress this enough. You cannot ever believe that your stalker has “got sane.” Even if they have, they may not stay that way. You must avoid this person forever for the rest of your life. Point final. That is a rule. Do not break it.

5a. No, really, she seems fine now.

Dude, I am so fucking serious. Don't do it. 

6. What can I do?

Hey, you made it! Awesome! This is kind of the final phase, I've found, in dealing with a stalker. There's a degree of acceptance that your stalker is mentally ill and, therefore, beyond your control.

Weird, I know, but it's like a disease. You picked it up somewhere, probably through no real fault of your own, and while it's not necessarily debilitating on a daily basis, it's not curable, either. It may never bother you again, or it may rise up from time to time and affect your daily life.

In terms of managing your illness, though, there are a few helpful things you can do.

Control your contact information. This is hard for some people, and morally frustrating – you're not the guilty party, you're the victim, and why should YOU have to change your phone number and e-mail address because some nut is harrassing you? Why should your friends and family have to change their contact information because of this person? It's not fair! No, it's not. It's malaria. It was a one-in-a-million chance that mosquito would bite you, but it did, and now you got it. And to manage your disease, you're going to have to undergo some uncomfortable treatments. Life's not fair. Suck it up.

Use spam blockers and filtering. In my case, I have a Web site for my professional careers as a writer and radio instructor. It'd be counter-productive to hide them or to not make myself e-mailable, so I have to accept that my “disease” is going to crop up more often than if I restricted my e-mail to close personal friends. I also have a forum for some comics I write, and those obviously have to be public as well. I do, however, have a spam blocker on my e-mail, which can swiftly be adjusted to block certain addresses, and a friendship with the forum manager that lets him delete posts and terminate accounts. Things still slip through, but the effort required to keep generating new e-mail addresses and forum IDs just to harrass me would... well, it would stall most people, but stalkers are mentally ill. So it's my hope that this extra layer of chaff, coupled with the any fuel feeds the fire policy of total non-response, will “encourage” the person to stop sooner rather than later.

Get the police involved. They can't do much, and probably won't do anything at all, unless you have actually been tangibly threatened. I'm not going to get into what that means except that unless you have a piece of paper that says IMA KILLA YOU signed by your stalker with photo evidence, you're not going to get very far. The horrible thing about cyberstalking is that it is ridiculously hard to prove that the person stalking you is the “real world” person you know it to be. BUT ... the police can help in one important way: opening a file for shortcuts down the road, if things do get serious. The last thing you want is to have your stalker finally take that quavering step over the violence line, and be trying to explain all of this to the police over the phone while she's pounding on your door with a fire axe at 3 a.m. The cops may be reluctant to do this – but print out all the e-mails, bring recordings of the phone messages, provide phone numbers and street addresses for all the other people she's harrassed. Have them open a file. It's not a big thing, but if her name and behaviour is in their system, it can save you a lot of time, and possibly bodily injury, if she finally flips out. 

Talk to people. One of the most frustrating things about the experience is it's so bloody singular. You're being subjected to extremely personal attacks, even if your friends and family are getting caught in the wake of all the crazy, and it can make you feel really isolated and angry. There's also the guys-don't-get-stalked attitude that pervades society – it's not very macho to talk about some crazy woman making you feel like you're not in control of your life. Talk about it anyway. If your friends are worth a damn, they'll understand that this is a really aggravating and intrusive experience; they may not understand at first, but explain how many aspects of your life this is infecting. They'll get it. Share your experience. If you don't feel like you can unburden yourself adequately with your friends and family, consider seeing a therapist – hell, if Tony Soprano can see a shrink, so can you. Not only can a therapist help you by listening and giving you some helpful advice on how to feel better, he or she can help you understand your stalker's mental illness, which is a good way to cope with the stalking. Once you know more about the nature of the stalker's mental fragility, you'll feel less like it's a personal attack and more like a force of nature – as mentioned often before, your stalker is mentally ill. They just happen to be going off on you instead of the secret voices in the bathtub drain or tattooing star charts on their ass. But don't take it from me – talk to a professional.

Get stronger. I don't mean lift weights (although physical exercise is good therapy), but getting mentally and spiritually stronger. This can be a strengthening experience in the long run. Your stalker is mentally ill, but this whole ordeal is going to force you to question your relationships in general, yourself, and how you relate to your friends and your family. Nothing solidifies friendships and relationships more than seeing your best friends get assaulted by a crazy person and come up smiling. And if you weather the stalking storm, by the time it's over you'll have a more concrete sense of who you are and how you relate to people. If you're lucky enough to have found somebody to share your life with, you'll appreciate that relationship all the more because the person you're with isn't, well, unhinged. 

Be happy. Tall order, right? At times, this is going to prey on your mind. You'll worry that this lunatic is going to infect your personal realtionships, your job, your entire life. What if she shows up at your house? Your job? What if she hurts somebody you care about? It's malaria. It's essentially beyond your control. If you've seen the police and you're engaging in a all fuel feeds the fire no-response policy, you're doing everything you can. And you know what? Burgers still taste as good as they used to, your favourite movie is still just as good as it was, the sun still shines and the trees still grow. This can be an overwhelming short-term burden to bear, but against the entire long line of your life, this is just a speck. Don't let it turn into a streak. That's control you can exercise.

I hope this was helpful, even if it just showed you that other guys do get stalked, and don't get taken as seriously as they should be. But it's survivable. It can be a daily shadow in your life for a while, a creaking, grinding annoyance, but it will pass. The important thing for you is to not start to counter-obsess about a crazy person's obsession, and not to let this run your life. Your stalker is mentally ill. There's no reason that somebody else's mental illness should ruin your shot at a healthy, happy, complete life.

Thanks for reading. I hope things work out for you if you're currently going through this; if you've found this page while looking to help somebody else, pass it along and I hope it does some good. Feel free to e-mail me if you like, but be warned that I suck at responding -- please don't take it personally if I don't get back to you. 

One last thing:

It occurs to me that this page might be found by somebody who is stalking, and seeking some sort of justification or even, unconsciously, recognizes their illness and wants help. 

If it occurs to you for even one second, one INSTANT, that the recipient of your attentions might find them unwanted, and you persist, you are a stalker. Seek help from a mental health professional.

Picture yourself explaining your behaviour to a stranger on the street. If you think you need to start explaining years of back-story or justification or “things he doesn't know/understand about this very complicated relationship,” you are a stalker. Normal relationships do not require logical contortions or insider knowledge. If you are engaging in activities that need elaborate justification, you are a stalker.