And perhaps more importantly, does it escalate?
I've been trying to look up the kind of behaviour I've observed around me on the part of a neighbour and it doesn't fit any stalking criteria but it's unsettling. It just creeps me out. The guy has been hanging around, trying to get himself invited into my place, and doing things for me when I don't want him to. For example, he shoveled my stairs, something I consider unnecessary, and the landing of course allows whoever is there to see through my window into my apartment.
So I'm uncomfortable. I've told him I had a boyfriend and didn't want him to flirt with me, and told him I didn't need his help and he didn't have to do these things. So I think it's clear I don't welcome his attention. However, the other day he was walking down the street I'd taken to go see someone and he waved at me like I should be happy to see him. He isn't very bright but that doesn't seem to be the whole story. I find myself getting irritated and angry at him.
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Its hard to say from your post. Are the stairs shared between both apartments? Maybe he just wanted them clean or wants the place to look nice. And if he was doing it as a favor to you, its hard to blame him for just that one favor. It sounds like you're describing a pattern of behavior, but its hard to tell from your post exactly what he's doing. What does he do to try to get himself invited over? Is he just making friendly conversation, or is it different than that? Waving at you in itself seems harmless, lots of neighbors would do that even if in a fight, just to try to keep things civil.
Basically, I"m asking what exactly he is doing that unsettles you? If he's really crossing a line then you need to do something to deal with it, but I'm not sure what. Curtains on that window might be a good start.
How do you know she doesn't have curtains on her window?
Why is the onus on her to keep her apartment shut up like a tomb, rather than on the neighbor to mind his own business?
Why is it assumed that this poster is not trustworthy enough to relate her experience accurately?
This is the kind of thing women go through when they report stalking, harassment, and even greater violence to the authorities. It's not appropriate to inflict this on somebody in a community that's supposed to provide a safe haven for discussing these kinds of experiences.
If there were already shut curtains, he wouldn't be able to see in. And I think the onus, in general, on anyone who doesn't want people seeing in their windows is to put up curtains. They don't have to be shut all the time, but they can be shut when you're not home and/or when a neighbor is doing outdoor work and annoying you.
There are blinds on the window and they're slanted upwards so you can't see in unless you're looking down. I'm on the upper floor so normally you can't see in. But someone lurking on my landing would be able to, since they would be up closer. In order to get to my landing you have to climb the steps. So it takes an effort. The thing is, when someone is on the landing for any particular reason, which is rare since it's a back door, they will see in more easily, just not the general public.
I don't think MissKitty was saying that the OP wasn't trustworthy, she was just asking for more information. And I think that's fair. By saying this guy tries to invite himself over all the time...how? The OP wants us to help her ascertain how stalkerish this guy is or can possibly become so in order to do so we need more facts.
Oh yeah, and I missed the trustworthiness comment at first. I think its pretty clear I was asking for *more detail*, not claiming the original poster lied.
It can escalate but it doesn't always. If I were you, I would let him know that I understand he's tying to be nice but what he's doing makes me feel uncomfortable, and if he escalates, ring the cops. They're not terribly sympathetic in these matters but at least you'd get it on paper.
Also, "not very bright" as in retarded or suffering from cognitive dissonance and unable to interpret social cues?
Not very bright as in having a Grade five education and spewing racist comments apparently without even realizing he's being unbelievably offensive ("I didn't mean nothin' by it", after using the N-word and me telling him this is a very bad word). Not very bright as in, I'm a militant non-smoker and he offered to "cut me in" on a deal to sell contraband cigarettes... I mean, how dumb can a man be...
Echoing what MissKitty had to say, it doesn't sound too bad at this point and the post itself just describes the behaviors, not necessarily what about them makes them a cause of worry.
Without a bit of explanation of what makes these behaviors really weird and not just, say, friendly to the point of not getting it, I'm at a little bit of a loss as to how to propose moving forward.
If you're really threatened by this, in the personal safety sort of way, start a paper trail with the police. They may not do anything now since the stuff he's doing could be weird but not dangerous, but it'll start a paper trail if something does escalate.
Yeah, it's more a question of the way he's spoken to me, his tone of voice, the way he looks at me - his comments indicate he's way more impressed with me than reality would warrant. And he violated some physical boundaries but in a way that I interpret as devious: when I told him I didn't want him flirting, he hugged me "as a friend", but that was like one day after I'd met him. I never hug anyone after just one day of meeting them - do you? The being "creeped out" feeling is more like 90 percent intuition than hard cold evidence, I admit. But as long as he's hovering only, I can't call him on it, which I guess is why I feel irritated with him.
Trust your gut, ignore and stay away. This guy's a creeper and needs to be kept in check.
Frankly, I've had much worse neighbors. Just keep being polite but distant. Wave back but don't go out of your way to chat. Most neighbors fall into a routine of being friendly when they run into each other and ignoring each other the rest of the time.
That sounds like a neighbour I had a few years back. He did nice things for us (I lived with a few girls) and would try to give us gifts. We would reject his gifts but he didn't get the hint.
It did escalate... he became obsessed with the "good vibes" he sensed from our house and trying to get in - at first just asking and being told no, then telling us that he had to go to the washroom and his own toilet was broken (we still said no) and then trying to break in at 3 or 4 in the morning.
In the end we had to call the police and get a restraining order - something that had to be done through 911 as he scratched and knocked at our door (we caught him trying to break in, he had another weird excuse...). He seemed to be mentally handicapped, so we didn't really want to pull all the stops on him immediately (we never pressed charges, since the restraining order worked).
So if you're creeped out, in my opinion, you've got every right to be. You may want to go the police already, but I'm really not sure.
Yikes and yuck!!! I'm very happy to hear a restraining order worked somewhere, but that was awful for you. Thank goodness I'm moving away soon. BTW the stairs are in the back, mine only, not shared, so no he had no reason to touch them. I've read that in more severe cases you have to ignore people like this, even if your comments are negative. Apparently any attention gives them hope. So I'm going to trust my instincts and the advice I've seen and detach, detach, detach. This also means containing irritation or temper flare-ups. Thank you.
Dominique, I say trust your instincts. Something here is rubbing you the wrong way. The way he hugged you after you clearly tried to set a boundary raises red flags to me. Sure, he could just be socially clueless, but he could also be someone who ignores boundaries and doesn't hear the word 'no'.
I highly recommend Gavin DeBecker's book The Gift of Fear. He discusses how your subconcious mind can sometimes clue you in to behavior that outwardly seems normal but for some reason feels inappropriate.
Yeah, that sounds a bit like a guy who has been trailing around my group of friends for the past few months.
He's a transman with Borderline Personality Disorder, and we met him through a my one friend who is a transman as well. He refuses to take meds or seek help for his Borderline, and he's an alcoholic. He has no concept of boundaries, and would regularly ask COMPLETELY inappropriate questions.
This guy cannot take a hint. He borderline stalked my one lesbian friend- who was not interested in him and is not interested in ANY kind of man.
He moved on to full on stalking my other lesbian friend who is interested in the same drag troupe he is. He showed up at her classes uninvited and started causing scenes at parties to get her attention. He also started to call/text her obsessively, even calling me a couple of times when she was in a movie with her girlfriend. He's currently banned from my apartment after pulling an attention-grabbing stunt that backfired on him (AKA people just got fed up of him getting plastered drunk and whinging for my friend's attention).
We tried to have an intervention but he refused to get help. So now he's banned from our parties, but he still continues to text my friend non-stop.
We noticed that as we all began to withdraw from him (because of his destructive behaviors and refusal to see a psychologist), his stalker/alcoholic tendencies increased dramatically. I’ve completely cut off contact with him, as have most people in my group and I think he’s just starting to get it.
I’m a little scared when I see him because I know he is really disconnected with reality and sees me as “the enemy”, because in his intervention I was the only one brave enough to say what had to be said. I’m a little scared for my safety because of this, but the only place I see him anymore is the queer center in town, and I don’t think he’d try anything there.
I've met people that sound like the guy youre talking about before. It seems to me they think in terms of framing everything as if its some devious game. With these people I firmly draw the line and insure that they dont step over it. I've had the whole 'no flirting, but its just a friendly hug' thing before and when they try and go in for one, I step away to be extra communicative and to enforce a idea for them to keep their place around me.
My 2¢: if he's making you uncomfortable then that's unacceptable, end of story. Call the cops.
The cops will do absolutely nothing in this situation.
I'm sorry that you're dealing with this and that others in this thread have experienced this, too. I know how scary/uncomfortable it can be. I've dealt with stalking recently and it's important for you to do as someone said above and let him know you feel uncomfortable by his behavior and that you don't want him to contact you in anyway or mess with your property. Say that anything else is crossing the line and grounds for contacting the cops. Then you can ignore him. If he does contact you again, you are able to contact the cops and tell them that yes, you have told this person to stop - that seems to be a key thing with the cops. They want to know that you have told the person to stop contacting you.
I agree with other posters who've told you to trust your gut, but the most frustrating thing is that there is little to no legal action possible until he has crossed the line into assault.
Stalky people suck. :(
I think one problem is women are in a Catch-22 situation most of the time. Taking precautions like avoiding people can have a cost. I spoke to the landlord about what to do if there's a plumbing problem or other such thing and he said "call the neighbours", so that puts me in a very vulnerable position. Also, when we are cautious or worried about the wrong kind of attention, we are labeled as "paranoid", or "cold and unfriendly". But if we let our guard down and get unwanted attention, we were "asking for it" or "the guy couldn't have known" we didn't want him doing x, y or z. It's unbelievably frustrating to be a single woman living alone sometimes. It's tough to "get it right". The only way to be "truly safe" is get a boyfriend or a husband, and therefore lose all autonomy. It sucks. A lot of times I feel like we're no different than people in Algeria, it's just less blatant here but just as problematic.
And yet, often if you do the typically female thing as I tried years ago, the boyfriend/husband laughs it off as mine did and you end up handling it yourself anyway. I forgot to mention in my post below I also had a gun when I had my stalky neighbor, left over from when I had my stalker.
It's amazing though, no matter how much security, or how many self defense classes you take, there isn't anything that will make you feel really safe when there is someone watching you, following you and harassing you to that level. It's indescribably creepy and you can't truly understand until you've experienced it. I couldn't sleep, lost weight, became extremely jumpy and irritable. It was just plain awful, and moving was the only thing that helped in any way, then I got the creepy stalky neighbor.
If he creeps you out and there is low level stalking, I say trust your vibes.
Years ago I had a low level stalker who would 'just happen' to be walking out of his apartment as I was getting out of my car on my way in, or 'just happen' to be coming into the laundry room when I was in the middle of my laundry, or he would 'just happen' to be around as I was coming out of my door. You get the picture.
My apartment complex was located across the street from a grocery store and around the corner from a 7/11. I would run into this guy at the grocery store, at the 7/11, he was everywhere. He'd always ask me if I wanted to come in for a beer and I'd always make an excuse. I had just moved about 1200 miles to get away from a stalker and I had taken karate classes for a year, and he was fairly small, so I figured if he was actually dangerous I could probably take him, but still he gave me 'Manson' vibes and I asked my boyfriend who was 6'6" to come over and let him get a look at him, thinking he'd back off just based on intimidation. He suggested I was overreacting.
One week I don't see the weird neighbor for a few days and when I come home from work one morning I pick up my newspaper and on the front page is his photo. He's murdered one of my other neighbors who went inside for a beer.
Turns out he was recently paroled, smoking crack, and stalking several of the women who lived in the complex, and while high he killed this woman, who had moved while fleeing an abusive relationship and left behind a couple of kids iirc. In a freak coincidence, my nail lady was dating the cop who arrested the guy and I got the inside scoop and found out he kept the body in the apartment for 2 or 3 days (I have since forgotten) before disposing of it and then called his mother while high and she called police to turn him in.
Since then I have always trusted my vibes about people and many times I've been vindicated when people told me I was being silly. Fuck 'em. I'm alive and that poor woman's kids don't have a mother anymore.