Rejecting an obsessive person, part four - addressing more concerns.

Continued from part three.

Since writing these three articles on how to reject or get away from someone who's being too clingy, one question I've been asked is essentially, "How should I reject an obsessive person who keeps saying they want to be more than just friends, but I want to remain friends with them, rather than cut all ties with them?" If you're in this position, don't worry; you have many options available. Whether you know this person in real life or over the internet, the steps you can take all boil down to the same things: being honest, being clear, and being stern. Let's go over some examples of this.

Say a girl has repeatedly asked you out online and you've turned her down every time, yet she hasn't stopped trying to be more than a friend of yours. First things first, you need to figure out why she isn't taking "No" for an answer. Is it because she's uncomfortably persistent, or is it because you've consistently replied with answers like "Maybe," "I don't know," or "I need to think about it?" If it's the latter: I applaud you for being honest and patient, but you need to work on being clear and stern. If it's the former: all that's needed is to be more stern.

One of the most common reasons why people in this situation don't give a clear "No, I will not go out with you" response is because they fear some kind of retaliation. This is usually caused by a combination of catastrophizing and a lack of people explaining to the person in this situation that they have nothing to worry about, often because they don't tell anyone that this is happening, contrary to the advice given in this article about letting as many people (that they trust) know as possible. If they did, they would almost certainly find a great deal of support, which would give them the confidence they need to give their admirer a very clear "No" for an answer.

In ninety nine cases out of a hundred, nothing bad ever happens as a result. So a letter might show up in your inbox, calling you a big, mean stupidhead. Is this the end of the world? Is this worth dwelling on? Is this worth living in fear of? Of course not. There's not an adult alive who's never been criticized; you can handle it, just like you've handled countless other things in your life. Remember that this, too, will pass, assuming you even receive any rude letters at all after turning someone down. Don't forget that you have friends who care about you and your well-being, you're strong enough to turn someone down, and you're a good enough person for others to want to ask you out in the first place.

Next, bear in mind that they're pursuing you romantically for a reason: they're attracted to you. They like you enough to try asking you out again and again. Chances are, they want to make you happy; they're practically guaranteed to want to see you smile, not cry. This can easily work in your favor. Remember the rejection statements you looked over in part one of this rejection series? Those all went over ways to tell someone "No" when they keep asking to have sex or similar physical experiences, and how to tell them "No" if you never want to see them again. But the differences in how you can tell them "No" under those circumstances compared to telling them "No" under your current circumstances (asking you to go out, not asking for sex, and they're a friend of yours, not a stranger) aren't that different. Consider saying one of the following things the next time this clingy person asks you out, for those of you who still want to remain friends with them afterward:

"I enjoy being your friend, but I don't want to be your [boy/girl]friend. I'm not going to go out with you, so please stop asking, okay? (It's getting annoying.)" [This lets them know that you value your friendship with them, while also making it clear that you will not go out with them. The last sentence in this statement is optional; you don't have to include it if you don't want to. You'll come across as much more stern, which significantly reduces the chance that they'll ask you out again. However, this can also hurt their feelings even more than they already will be, due to being rejected.]

"I don't know you very well, and I don't feel comfortable going out with someone if I don't know them well enough." [This one was copied and pasted from part one - then significantly edited - as an example of what not to say to a clingy person who's a friend of yours. If it was said to a stranger on a bus that you'd never see again, this would a fine excuse; you would disembark and ditch them as quickly as you could, never giving them a chance to get to know you.]

[However, this would be catastrophic to say to a clingy friend. If they're already a friend of yours and you want to remain friends, then the two of you spend time together. That being the case, they would think, "Oh, okay. All I have to do is spend more time getting to know you, then I'll ask you out again!" Whoops. Talk about prolonging the problem. This is an example of not being clear enough; it gives them hope that all they have to do is wait awhile longer until they can ask you out again.]

"Look, I've already given you my answer on this several times. The phrase 'no means no' exists for a reason. Please respect that and stop asking me out." [Simple and effective; a nice mix of being honest, clear, stern, and even polite.]

"You've made your point clear: you want to go out with me. I've said 'no' many times now. Continuing to ask me out is just going to keep making me uncomfortable. You don't want me to be uncomfortable, do you?" [This is an example of working the fact that they probably want you to be happy in your favor.]

"I've said 'no' several times now. How can you expect me to go out with you when you clearly have no respect for me, my boundaries, or my wishes?" [Look familiar? This is another example of something you should not say to a clingy friend that you only wish to remain friends with, for the exact same reasons as the other example. In this case, your clingy friend would think, "Oh, okay. All I have to do is show her that I can be more respectful. After that, the problem will be solved; she'll see I have respect for her, so she'll have no problem with me asking her out again afterward!"]

[If you were to use this rejection statement, it would be defining criteria under which they could (and in their mind, should) ask you out again. By doing that, you're not being clear that you're rejecting them; the message that sends is, "Here's what you need to do before you can ask me out again," rather than "Stop asking me out; let's remain friends." This statement also does nothing to address the fact that you want to remain friends with them.]

"I understand how you feel and I respect your feelings, but I don't want to go out with you. Please understand and respect my feelings, too; I just don't want to go out with you. I hope we can remain friends. Do you need some alone time?" [This statement gets a little presumptuous about their response(s) at the end, but I felt the need to illustrate the use of that final phrase. It drives the point - that you're rejecting them as a lover - further home, and reminds them that they can take some alone time to express their grief over this.]

[This is an excellent alternative to them staying with you, expressing their grief on the spot for anywhere from minutes to hours, and being even clingier. If they respond with something like, "I don't need alone time; I need to be with you," you could politely remind them, "You don't need to be with me; you want to be with me - so much that you're disrespecting me by repeatedly asking me out when I keep saying 'no.' Every time you ask me out, what you're telling me is, 'Your feelings don't matter; only mine do. That's why I'll keep asking you out until you do what I want.' If you really care about me: please just listen to me and stop asking me out. I only want to be your friend, not your [boy/girl]friend. Do you understand?"]

If you're in this situation, don't feel guilty about quoting any of the above statements word for word, if you want to, as long as you think they'll work for you. Feel free to come up with your own rejection statement too, if you'd like! Putting it in your own words is often best; since they're your words, not someone else's, they should be easier to remember. If you do this, make sure to cover the bases of being honest, clear, and stern, and that you don't accidentally mention something that your clingy friend could misunderstand as a criteria to fulfill before asking you out again.

One last, important aspect of this is addressing the second half of your intent behind rejecting them: remaining friends with them after they've accepted that you won't go out with them. Needless to say, they're going to feel hurt, and if you do nothing, their pain could cause them to emotionally lash out at you. Since your intent is to remain friends with them: do exactly that. When it's clear that they're in pain, try to ease it.

Anything from mentioning that there are plenty of other fish in the sea - in your own words, and giving practical examples of other people they might like, if applicable - to joining in on one of their hobbies or interests to cheer them up could go a long way toward comforting them. There are a million things you could do, but you're their friend; you know them better than I ever will. What do you think you should do to remain friends with them, once you've rejected them for the last time? Whatever choice you make, I'm sure things will work out for you, and if you ever need more help or advice, remember that it's okay to seek it.

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Rejecting an obsessive person, part three - over the internet.

Continued from part two.

"But I'm not sure I can remove my stalker from my friends list!" is another popular concern. "We have mutual friends; what if they lie to them by telling them that I'm secretly really mean?" Proof usually trumps rumor-mongering. Before removing your stalker, I want you to take screenshots of what they said or did which made you decide to remove them. Copying their text isn't good enough; your stalker could claim that you're lying about them saying those things. I know that photos can also be forged, but considering that it usually takes hundreds of times longer to masterfully edit a photo without a single pixel being out of place to make it seem like someone said something they didn't - and taking into account that you may not have the skills to do this - it's unlikely that anyone will believe your stalker if they say "Those pictures are photoshopped!"

"But I don't know how to take screenshots..." Say "hello" to option one, one of the most useful programs you'll ever use: puush. This allows you to take screenshots of anything, almost anytime. After you register an account (don't forget to write down your puush email address and password in that username-and-password text file you've made!) and download puush, you're ready to start using it. I've changed most of the default keybinds on mine, but to give you an example of how it works, you can press ctrl+shift+3 to take a picture of your entire screen. To view - and change - your keybinds, open puush by double clicking its white arrow icon in your tool tray, then click the Key Bindings tab at the top.

Keep in mind that puush screenshots (which can be viewed by going to your Account tab and clicking the My Account button) are all deleted from your account after about thirty days, unless you pay for longer lasting storage. If you're not interested in paying, I recommend taking screenshots, and when you think one is important enough to use again in the future, access that specific screenshot in whichever web browser you prefer, right click it, and save it to your computer. I also recommend changing your Capture current window keybind to something which only requires one hand, like left shift+tab, so you may use it very frequently with as little hassle as possible.

"Sometimes puush's servers are offline, or I have other problems concerning it." Then here's option two: the PrtScr key in the top-right corner of your keyboard. This will allow you to take screenshots of your entire screen, with or without a working internet connection. Imagine that while you're on a computer, you have an invisible clipboard on standby, waiting to take down one piece of information. Whenever you copy something - such as a single word, fifty pages worth of text, or a picture - that information is temporarily stored on that invisible clipboard. That is how the PrtScr key works. A picture of your entire screen overwrites any other information you may have previously had waiting on your clipboard, and you can paste that picture (as in the "paste" portion of the phrase "copy and paste") into an image editing program, such as MS paint.

It's important to note that your clipboard can only contain one set of information at a time, so if you copy some text after pressing the PrtScr key, your picture will be deleted and replaced by the text you chose. After pressing PrtScr, you should open MS paint - or any other image editing program of your choice - and press ctrl+v as soon as possible, in order to paste a picture of what your screen looked like when you pressed PrtScr, and of course, save the picture immediately. (Ctrl+v is the command to paste information from your clipboard and works in a great many programs, whether you intend to paste text, a picture, or even audio data, assuming the program you're using is designed to edit such information.) If you'd like, you can edit the dimensions of the picture you took to crop out irrelevant information.

I'll say it again: if you have friends in common with your stalker and you want to get them out of your life, make sure you have irrefutable proof of what wrongdoings they're guilty of before removing them. If you believe they'll cause drama, you'll need that proof to defend yourself. Getting into the habit of taking screenshots of certain things, saving them, and even creating backups of them if necessary is a good practice all around; knowing how to gather and preserve evidence is a vital skill that everyone should have, including those who don't have stalkers.

One way of preserving evidence is to first take and save a screenshot, then make a copy of it and transfer the copy to an external hard drive or solid-state drive. HDDs or SSDs are the boxes inside your computer that store long-term information, like pictures, songs, and other data. You can buy more HDDs and SSDs as boxes that sit on the outside of your computer, and are usually connected via a USB cable. If you've ever plugged anything into a computer with a USB cable, you know how to connect and use an external HDD or SSD, and yes, external ones can be used at the same time as internal ones. Think of them as bigger flash drives with much higher capacities.

The only problem is that they're out of some people's price range, if you don't have anywhere from $50 to several hundred dollars to spend on one, and if yours fails, repairs could cost you anywhere from $300 to $5,000, depending on which company you bought it from, whether or not it's still within warranty, and how it failed. Some failures won't require you to spend any money at all to fix, but physical failures - the kind caused by accidentally knocking your HDD over too many times, spilling liquid on it, or other such failures - will. It's a good thing we have alternatives to this.

Much like puush, a website called mediafire can be used to store information of your choosing. It won't take screenshots for you, but it'll do a fine job of saving them, if you choose to upload your screenshots to it. Boasting an impressive 50 GB worth of storage for all of its users for free (note: that's probably more room than you'll ever need. I say this after using their services for eight years straight and uploading many hundreds of files to my mediafire account), to my knowledge, they never delete the files you upload, if the files on my account are anything to judge by. If you want to make sure you have backups of important information, then make a mediafire account and upload that information to your account. (And don't forget to write down your login details in your usernames-and-passwords text file!)

One more method you may want to use to create lasting proof of something is a webpage archiver. I recommend using this website, archive.is, to create a sort of snapshot of a webpage in its current form. The thing is, instead of only being a picture, it creates a virtual copy of that page, meaning that all its links and other content are fully interactive. After submitting a link to archive on the main page, there'll be a loading screen, and once it's finished, you'll receive a link to that archived page. If it's important enough to you that you feel the need to archive that page, you should save that link somewhere where you know beyond any shadow of a doubt that you'll never forget it or lose it! This site is another option, but they've been proven to delete their own archived pages at the request of people with bad intentions, making the site unsuitable for most people.

There are many other ways to save and preserve information, but all of the methods and tools I've mentioned here will suit your needs just fine. These are only a means to an end - a way for you to give yourself peace of mind before cutting all ties with your stalker or someone else you need to remove from your life, which can be difficult for many people to do. By now you understand that the foundation of preventing yourself from having stalkers in the first place is to remain as anonymous as you can online whenever possible, and you may have learned some things about software you didn't use until now, and how very much it can help you. Next, let's go over some things you probably already use, and how you can use them to cut contact with people who are too obsessive toward you.

Facebook is a site we're all familiar with. If you're a facebook user, blocking and removing someone is as straightforward there as it is on most other sites. All you have to do is navigate to your stalker's profile, hover your mouse over the Friends button near the top if you're friends with them, and click Unfriend in the dropdown menu that will appear. To the right of this button, you'll see a "..." button. After clicking it, a dropdown menu will appear. Under this menu, you can click the Report button to report them if you wish, and the Block button to block them. Another thing you'll want to do is go to your profile, and in the Friends section, click the Manage icon on the right, followed by Edit Privacy. Ensure that nobody can see your friends list but you and your friends, or only you.

While you're at it, if you have a facebook profile and are currently logged in to it, you should click this link, which will take you to your privacy settings. Giving stalkers the ability to see your posts, the people on your friends list, and other sensitive information could give them the chances they need to continue being a thorn in your side. Once you're done with those settings, look at the Timeline and Tagging option on the left side of that screen, and make sure that you adjust all of those privacy settings, too. In addition, take note that if your stalker hasn't found you on facebook and you know their profile, you shouldn't view it. If you view someone's profile too many times, you'll start showing up in their "People you may know" list, which will alert them to your presence.

Are you a redditor? Consider clicking preferences in the top-right corner, then scrolling down to your messaging options and disabling the checkbox which says "notify me when people say my username." You can also go to your inbox and block individual users by clicking "block user" below a message from a user you wish to block from messaging you. And if you really feel the need to, feel free to delete your account by clicking the "delete" tab under your preferences; it's the tab that's farthest to the right.

I'm sure you're no stranger to skype, considering it has over three hundred and fifty million registered users. If you use it and want to avoid stalkers on it, start by blocking and removing them, in that order. After you right click their username, select Block This Person. In the new window that appears, check the Remove from your Contact List option, and if necessary, the Report abuse box as well. Once you're done, click the Block button. To no longer see your chat history with them, go to your Recent tab, right click their username, and click Hide conversation.

To prevent them from freely messaging you again, go to Tools (one of the tabs at the top of skype) > Options > Privacy and adjust your settings to prevent people who aren't on your contact list from IMing you or starting calls with you. To make it harder for your stalker to find you again, you should click your avatar in the top-left corner of skype, then click your display name near the top-center of the window and change it to something new - preferably a name you've never used before and have no intention of using on any websites.

With over one hundred and twenty five million users and a peak of about nine million online simultaneously, steam is worth mentioning. As with skype, it's much easier to block and remove them from your friends list in that order, rather than removing them, possibly having trouble finding them again, and being unable to block them until they make contact with you again as a result. To block them, either search for them in your friends list, click the arrow to the right of their name, and select Block All Communication, or go to their profile, click the More button near the top-right side of their profile, and choose the same option.

In both cases, you can remove them using the same steps; just replace Block All Communication with the Remove this Friend option or the Unfriend option. To make it harder for your stalker to find you again, go to your profile, and near the top-right side, click Edit Profile. Near the center, above your avatar, where it says Custom URL you'll see an input field to the left of http://steamcommunity.com/id. If you don't already have a steam ID, give yourself one. If you have one already, change it to something new. Also consider quickly changing your display name more than ten times (which will clear your alias history) and give yourself a name you've never used before. Finally, click My Privacy Settings near the top-right side and change your profile status so that nobody but your friends can view it, and only your friends can comment on it.

For those of you who use tumblr, if you're receiving hatemail or other unwanted mail from someone who is not anonymous, simply click the X icon in the last ask or fanmail they sent you. You can also use this link to report their behavior, if the situation warrants it. If you're receiving anonymous hatemail on there, you can block the person who sent it by clicking the same X icon. You can't report them since their account name won't show up in your ignore list, but an added benefit is that they can never send you hatemail from that IP address again. You also have the option of disabling anonymous asks - or all asks - under Settings > [your blog name] on the right.

Getting tweets from an obsessive Twitter user you want nothing to do with? Under one of their tweets, click the "..." button, then select Mute. You will no longer receive notifications or tweets that are from or about them. Next, under a different tweet (the previous one you chose will be gone), click the same "..." button as before, and click Block this time. Once you do, they'll no longer be able to follow you or message you. It will also prevent you from seeing their tweets on their profile by default, unless you click a View Tweets button near the top. More privacy options can be found by clicking your avatar in the top right corner, clicking Settings, then clicking the Security and privacy tab near the top-left side of the page.

Getting unwanted phone calls, text messages, or emails? There are so many hundreds of email clients and cell phone models nowadays that it would be impossible for me to go over all of them with you, but it's not all bad news: many phones and email clients allow you to block unwanted communications. All you have to do is research how to do it (I.E. google it or look up how it's done using another search engine) with your specific type of phone or client.

One last question you may have is, "But what if I've blocked my stalker and they continue trying to get in touch with me by adding my friends and trying to speak to me through them?" Then you need to let your friends know that that's not okay, and on top of that, increase your security settings so that your stalker can't view who your friends are - if possible, and it is on facebook and steam, among other things. Consider creating a post or updating a status of yours, informing friends that they shouldn't accept a friend request from so-and-so, because they're only sending friend requests to harass you.

If things have truly gotten bad and you can't seem to get rid of your stalker by changing a display name or adjusting your privacy settings, remember: that website doesn't control your life. You lived a long time without having an account on there and you're strong enough to do without it. And instead of leaving that website for good, you could create a new account with a new alias and a slimmer friends list, only adding back the people you trust or stay in frequent contact with. This is also a great way of determining who really matters to you, and don't forget: making a new account on a website is not the end of the world. Even on steam, where you may have sunk hundreds or even thousands of dollars into your account, it's not a big deal because you can use steam family sharing to continue playing all the games you've paid for (or received as gifts) on an entirely new account.

Sure, stalkers and other clingy people we don't want in our lives can be a nuisance, but they're just that: a nuisance and nothing more. With all this information at your disposal, you should have all the options you need to say "goodbye" to them for good and move forward with your life, if your goal is to get rid of them. However, sometimes things aren't always that simple, and people want to remain friends with someone after rejecting them. In part four, you can see many of the options that these people have available.

Concluded in part four.

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Rejecting an obsessive person, part two - over the internet.

Continued from part one.

Let's say there's a person who constantly wants access to you, but they don't know you in real life; they only know you over the internet. What should you do then? Fortunately, it's much easier to turn someone away over the internet since, in many cases, it's as simple as clicking a "Block" button. Assuming this stalker only knows you on a single website, deleting them from your friends list is usually all it takes to remove them from your life. But those who have been in this situation many times before can tell you that it's not always that easy.

It's reasonable to assume that you have at least one or two usernames that you've used on many different websites. A pseudonym you once used on facebook could easily be the same one you used for three different gaming websites you've forgotten about, instagram, an old youtube account you no longer remember, and your active twitter account. If a stalker knows your name on one of these: they could easily know your name on all the others. With all that information at their disposal, it becomes easier for them to find out newer usernames you've started using, too.

They used to only message you on facebook, but now that you've removed them as a friend, they're trying to message you on twitter. You block them on twitter as well, but now they're emailing you, whether you like it or not. Where does it end? Assuming you've made a decision to get them out of your life and you're unwilling to listen to what they have to say, this comes down to two tactics: taking preventive measures and having a solid understanding of the media you use - specifically, how it can be used to contact you or connect you to other media.

Starting with the first, taking preventive measures entails preparing for the worst. On facebook - and any other applicable website or software - this means changing your settings so that as much information as possible on your profile is invisible to people who aren't your friends. Needless to say, this makes it harder for would-be stalkers to learn more about you, especially if they were never friends with you on that particular website.

Another preventive measure is keeping your anonymity intact at every possible opportunity. You should obviously use your real name when making an account on your bank's website, for example, but aside from these scenarios where you need to make an account that's linked to you and your actions in the real world (like a profile on your company's website, if they require all their employees to have one), you should always avoid using your real information.

Is your real name John Doe? Congratulations: your new first and last names online are anything but "John" and "Doe." Feel free to use "Bobby Bobberson," "Will Smith," or even "Jane Wilsterhamptonshire." Anything but your real name. The same is true of things like your cell phone number and any other information that's tied to you in the real world. "But what cell phone number should I use when signing up on websites that can detect fake numbers?" you ask, to which I reply: the number of one of the last telemarketers who called you.

"But what about websites that require you to answer a call or type in a code from a text message?" Consider looking into virtual phone numbers, or just biting the bullet and using your real number for that site, and as few other sites as possible. If possible, edit your profile on such websites so that no one can see your phone number but you. Alternatively, you may not even need to perform such a step.

Gmail has become infamous for requiring most people to verify their new email accounts by answering a text or phone call, but if you use a convincingly real first and last name, do not provide a phone number, do not fill out the "Your current email address" field, and do not choose the "Skip this verification" option, gmail won't force you through the "prove you're not a robot by responding to a text or call" page. (This is one example of the second tactic - having a superb understanding of the media you use - and the first tactic combined.)

You might think, "At least it's alright for me to use my real date of birth." If so, you're wrong! You may have used different pseudonyms and hid your phone number on your profiles, but whoops: you used the exact same date of birth on every website you've ever signed up on. Now, when your stalker finds your facebook profile - which you linked from another website, using a different display name on both of them - they'll be pretty sure that it's you, since you're the one who linked it. Once they see that the date of birth listed on both accounts is exactly the same, any doubt will be removed and they'll know to message you on there. They'll also know a new username they can use to find more information about you.

So, how do you keep up with all this information? By writing it down. What's worked best for me - and considering that this has always worked flawlessly for me and has helped me over a thousand times in the past fifteen years, I can't stress how important is is that you actually do this! - is creating a text file which contains every username, password, and email address that you use when registering on websites. In my opinion, the best syntax is as follows:

Abcwebsite.com
Username
pa [Just the first two or three letters of your password]
myemail@gmail.com

Username2
pa1 [Just the first two or three letters of your password. By the time you made Username2, Abcwebsite.com implemented a new policy where all passwords must contain both numbers and letters. Because of this, for Username2, you used your regular password, but added the number 1 to the end of it. You make a note of this by writing down "pa1" instead of "pa" under this account.]
altemail@yahoo.com


=Bcdwebsite.com=
UnrelatedName
pa [Just the first two or three letters of your password]
totallydifferentemailaddress@gmail.com

Did you notice the two lines worth of empty space between Abcwebsite and Bcdwebsite? This is for readability. You'd be amazed by how much easier it is to read and navigate between your different account names, passwords, and email addresses on various websites when you add two lines of empty space directly above each website name. Meanwhile, using one space between your account names is a good practice, especially since you could easily wind up with ten or more email accounts over the years under a single email service.

Notice that three different usernames, three different email addresses, and two different email providers (gmail and yahoo) were used across two different websites. This was used to maintain anonymity. When your stalker uses a search engine to find more information about you and they only know your "UnrelatedName" username, the only results they'll find are places where that name is mentioned - so they shouldn't be able to find you on Abcwebsite, only Bcdwebsite. Even if they do find you on both, they'll see the many differences in your accounts, and could very well think that those three accounts belong to different people.

The main reason why you should always add your email address when keeping track of your usernames and passwords is because some websites don't have usernames; you log in with your email address and password instead. A secondary - but still important - reason is to recover your account in case something goes wrong, and you don't remember which of your many, many email addresses you used when registering that account. You should always write down the phone number you use, if you even use one, for similar reasons.

The final good practice in this example is =Bcdwebsite.com= itself. The two equals signs around it make it a hundred times faster to find certain websites in your text file, especially when using ctrl+f. Need to find the password to log in to one of your gmail accounts? If you use ctrl+f to search for myemail@gmail.com, you're going to have to slowly go through every single website that you've signed up on using that email address in alphabetical order, until you reach "g" for "gmail." By throwing == around Gmail, all you have to do is type =Gmail= or simply =G to jump straight to your list of gmail accounts when using the ctrl+f command. Not familiar with ctrl+f? Try using it now to see how it works!

(And have you made your text file yet? If not, do so immediately. You'll be glad it exists every time you have to reference it. Gone will be the days of, "Yeah, I have an account on there. I just wish I could remember the password :(" This is another reason why you need to make such a list to deter stalkers: you need to be able to log in to your accounts so you can edit them and remove your personal information, or outright delete them, if possible and when necessary.)

You can also write down the date of birth you use on every website if you want to, but I've never  encountered a situation where I needed to input my date of birth to verify that I am who I say I am, except on websites that were owned by banks. On these sites, I used my real date of birth anyway - like any sane person would, since you shouldn't lie when registering a bank account - so there was no need for me to keep track of a fake one.

You can pick any random month, day, and year every time you sign up on a new site, and you should be fine. To not come across as a bot, when choosing your DoB, you should choose years that are within ten years of the one you were born in. And remember the point of this: choose a different month, day, and year every time! There's no point in always claiming that you were born on Halloween or any other day you weren't actually born on if you're going to keep reusing it on every website - the purpose is to show your stalkers different dates, so they think Account1 and Account2 were made by different people, when really, they both belong to you.

(You've remembered to actually make the text file by now, right? If you don't know how to make a text file, just right click your desktop, hover your mouse over the word "New," and in the menu that appears to the right, select "Text Document.")

Continued in part three.

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Rejecting an obsessive person, part one - in real life.

When a yandere - or a significantly clingy, but non-yandere person - takes interest in you, and you're not interested in them, what do you do? Resign yourself to being in a relationship with them, whether you like it or not? Of course not. However, rejecting someone who might ignore the common phrase "no means no" could require a little more finesse than simply telling them that you're not interested. Let's go over some of the things a person should do in such a situation.

If you're in this situation, one of the first questions you should ask yourself is, "Why, exactly, is this person pursuing me?" Does this person only want to have sex with you? Is this person demanding to be your girlfriend? Is this person upset with you and only wants to make you miserable? In any case, you'll need to determine what it is they want from you, in order to know how to defuse the situation.

The first situation is the most difficult to deal with because it's the only one which inherently implies that it's taking place in the real world, not on the internet, while the other two could go either way. If you have a stalker or anything similar in the real world, they're obviously going to be more difficult to disassociate with than someone on the internet; I don't have to tell you that there are no "Delete Contact" buttons that work in meatspace. But this doesn't mean your situation is hopeless. If a person is ever too clingy toward you in the real world and they're a complete stranger, consider what the writers did in the two multi-paragraph stories in this linked post.

Without a doubt, crying or having another loud, attention-grabbing response is a terrific reaction to being in such a situation, if your safety is your main concern. However, one thing to avoid is having an angry, attention-grabbing response. In most cases where people don't interfere with someone being victimized right before their eyes, there's an obvious element of danger - the fear that if a bystander gets involved, they will also be harmed, so they believe they should stand back and wait for someone else to help instead. Thus, no one helps.

If you remove the yelling and aggression from such a situation and replace it with crying or distress, people are far more likely to help, as they helped the girl in the second story you read earlier. But what about situations when the person isn't a complete stranger - when it's someone who knows you personally, including where you live? Again: at your nearest possible convenience, having a sort of breakdown with as many people present as possible has a strong chance of getting the aggressor to back off, thanks to strangers getting involved and showing them that what they're doing is wrong.

As messed up as it is, some people are taught by parents, coaches, peers, and other figures to be overly aggressive from early childhood. Some believe that they know what other people want better than they do. Some are just selfish and don't want to take "no" for an answer. Some are taught that being only assertive - not aggressive - is a good thing, but they go overboard with it. Some major businesses even endorse policies with names like "two 'no's and a 'go'" to train their employees to reject a customer's first "no, I don't want this" and to continue making a sales pitch until the customer says "no" a second time.

On the opposite end of that spectrum are people who may well be as shy as the two girls in those two stories. After speaking with a counselor for a long time or receiving a pep talk from a friend, today's finally the day they worked up the courage to try asking a girl out on a date - and in public, no less! Talk about working on their confidence. Keeping this in mind, if we re-examine the second story and ignore as much of the storyteller's bias as we can, it's easy to see that the person in her story may have only had good intentions.

Despite this, the bus driver (and presumably others, since they were yelling at him) assumed he had downright evil intentions. Have you ever rode on public transportation and raised your voice so loudly for an entire conversation that everyone on the bus could hear it, all the way up to the bus driver at the very front? Chances are that you haven't, and that neither did this guy. With all the chatter, loud noises of other vehicles and ongoing activity inside and outside the bus, and with his mind focused mostly on the road, few would argue that the bus driver heard or noticed anything until he stopped the bus and two people stood without getting off.

The bus driver described the guy in the story who worked up the courage to ask the girl out on a date as a harasser, without hearing a word from him or asking to hear his side of the story before pulling him away by force. Without any frame of reference about what happened, he was left to assume that the male - who was actively trying to console the girl - was some sort of criminal. This is the power of crying around others.

You're probably already aware that, in most media where there's a struggle between good and evil, the "good guys" and "bad guys" are often clearly defined. You're likely also familiar with most stories - whether in national headlines or gossip that's been heard from a friend - being told in such a way that plainly define one side as good and another as bad, even if it means exaggerating some traits and downplaying others. When you account for this lifelong over-saturation of ludicrously black-and-white scenarios, not to mention an innate need to rationalize things we don't understand, it's no wonder bystanders automatically assumed the boy who asked her out on a date had bad intentions.

Next to a damsel in distress, people need to see a mustache-twirling villain to make sense of it. Seeing the boy as a human being who was only trying to follow his counselor's advice would be too out-of-the-ordinary for most people to reconcile next to a crying girl, and require minutes worth of gathering evidence and fact-checking - and why do that when you can have an instant, angry, emotional reaction instead, followed by supporting someone else and telling them that everything will be okay? And in their minds, there's their good deed for the day, even if they'll never know whether it truly was good or not, by their own definition of the word.

And now we're back to telling someone "no." When doing so, make it clear that you do not want to have sex with them or have any sort of relationship, friendship, or any physical contact with them, if you feel that way. Doing this in no uncertain terms is enough to make any reasonable person back off - like a shy person who's working on their self-esteem, or an inexperienced person who's trying to work on their social skills - and demanding that they leave you alone has got to be the easiest possible way to distinguish a wallflower from a potential attacker. It would be unethical to choose not to take this simple step, jump to the conclusion that they have bad intentions, and have a devastating impact on a person's development as a result.

Be completely sure that this person doesn't misunderstand you and think you're interested. In the first story, mentioning having a boyfriend would have been enough to deter a sensible person. Even if you don't have a significant other, mentioning having one is a good idea if you feel threatened or suspicious in a situation like this. (It's a shame that saying this only drives away the good people, not the bad ones. But this, in itself, can be used to determine how to act and react toward them.)

Examples of firm, honest statements you can reply with are:

"I don't know you [at all/very well], and I don't feel comfortable doing that with a stranger."
"I understand that we've known each other for awhile now, but this has nothing to do with how long we've been friends. I'm just not interested in that."
"Please leave me alone."
"The phrase 'no means no' exists for a reason. Please respect that and stop asking to touch me."
"I've said 'no' several times now. How can you expect me to do what you want when you clearly have no respect for me, my boundaries, or my wishes?"
"I've said 'no' several times. Do you not understand how rude you're being right now by asking yet again?"
"If your mother was here, do you think she'd be proud of how demanding you're being about touching my body?"
"Look, I've been saying 'no' about this for awhile now and you clearly haven't been listening to me. You need to stop. Now."
"If you don't stop acting like a creep, I'll scream."

The biggest argument against speaking up that I've seen is, "I don't want to [come off as rude], so I don't know what to do in this situation." Most of the above the sentences are already polite in any variations of those situations, but if you really want to cover your bases, consider appending the following phrases to parts of the ones above, to make them more polite:

"I'm flattered that this is so important to you, but"
"No, thanks."
"I understand how you feel and I respect your feelings, but"

If they won't stop asking for or trying to make physical contact with you and, as a reminder, if they know who you are - for example, you sometimes interact at school, work, or anywhere else - you should cut off contact with them as best you can. At the same time, let as many people as possible know that they're not taking "no" for an answer. If there's one thing that makes people feel outraged, it's sexual misconduct, and if you're on the receiving end of it, speaking up about it with people you can trust is always the best course of action.

Continued in part two.

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Yandere origins, part three.

Continued from part two.

When a teenager or younger person is introduced to a show that focuses on yanderes or yandere-like characters (such as yangires, or people who are obsessive in general), even if they don't emulate the characters they see, they're still likely to think about these characters, and simply thinking about them can be enough to have an impact on that child's behavior and development. All these age-based factors surrounding being a yandere and the fact that they usually only work for younger people is exactly why there's a much greater lack of yanderes in their thirties, forties, and so on.

As people age, they tend to become more moderate in most aspects of their life. Getting a bad grade is no longer the end of the world, a scraped knee no longer causes crying, and the hysterics of teenage drama are usually replaced with quieter, more measured responses. Being a more extreme approach to romance than nearly all others, yandere tendencies often die down as a person matures. Just as a person can become yandere through a long series of events or just one particularly intense one, a person can stop acting like a yandere, too.

Citing one of the previous reasons for them existing in the first place, as teens and young adults age, their hormones die down, giving them a greater clarity of thought that's less dependent on emotions. These people are still capable of love, obviously; nobody's questioning that. But after leaving puberty behind once and for all, they'll be less obsessive in matters of romance than they were prior to becoming an adult. This also ties in with experiencing more relationships and becoming more accustomed to them over time.

Another age-based reason why yanderes mellow out as they age is that they're less impressionable, less willing to be eccentric, and develop a stronger preference for fitting in with just about everyone their own age, not only those they like. These - and others - are the reasons why you so rarely, if ever, see adults in the real world dressed along the lines of the "gothic lolita" style, or other, similar styles worn almost exclusively by teens and very young adults. And while some businesses permit casual attire on a daily basis, it's well-known that only an exceedingly tiny minority would allow their employees to dress in that same style, or like an extreme punk rock enthusiast.

The near-total inability to get a job without adhering to the social norms of that area and the growing need to get a job as a person grows up are two more influential decisions in why people stop behaving like yanderes. People recognize that they need to keep at least some of their quirks to themself if they want to find and hold down a job, and working a part time job just twenty to thirty hours a week, every week, is easily enough to temper a person's peculiarities over time.

Also, as a person grows, other people tend to become less willing to put up with their stranger traits. They may forgive them or find them endearing in a child, but in an adult, odd mannerisms are often seen as undesirable - things that should have been eliminated in adolescence, giving purpose to the phrase, "They should know better[ than to behave like that]." Although that person's friends may support their quirks in private, while that person is serving fast food in the real world, it's vital that they recognize the need to keep such characteristics from having a negative impact on their work.

Yet another reason why yanderes frequently stabilize with age is due to finding the love they sought for such a long time. Recalling a story that an old acquaintance once told me, she was once in a relationship with someone who was clingy. Apparently their partner was so obsessive that they spoke to one another all day long for a few years straight. (However, I assume that by "all day," she really meant "about six or more hours a day," not a full, endless twenty four hour cycle, or whatever period of time the sun was up on a daily basis.)

One of the underlying factors why most yanderes are yanderes is that they have low self-esteem. Her partner was no different. As time went on and she gradually helped her partner feel more secure about themself, they felt less of a need for her or her affection. It turns out that, even for a clingy person, there can be such a thing as too much love - hence why we refer to it as "too much." Just as a yandere can be born from a normal person due to a severe drought of affection, so too can a yandere be transmuted back into a normal person, if given a sufficient abundance of love.

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Yandere origins, part two.

Continued from part one.

The most common cause of minors thinking they're unloved likely comes from a lack of apparent fondness in both their home and school lives. When a child spends eight hours a day asleep, eight hours a day in school and the remaining eight hours at home or elsewhere, such as a on a bus or in a car, it's understandable that how people view them at school and at home - the two places where they're liable to spend the vast majority of their time while awake - will have a significant impact on how they view themself.

If people do not openly care about them or their well-being at school or home, they're prone to believing they're unloved. If they believed they're unloved, you can expect their confidence and worldviews to be heavily affected. If I could only mention two "ingredients" in the metaphorical recipe that makes a person clingy, they would be an intense, persistent feeling of worthlessness, followed by the love or acceptance of another person. It's no wonder that so many real yanderes have low self-esteem, or used to have low self-esteem for many years.

Another major factor in the existence of yanderes is age. In teenagers in particular, hormones cause people to behave more emotionally or erratically than they otherwise would. It's also no secret that as we age and have more relationships, the initial importance of being in one wears off for most people; having a boyfriend for the seventh time is no longer as important or exciting to someone as it was to have a boyfriend for the very first time. It's no surprise, then, that younger people - who have only lived long enough to be in one or two relationships - tend to be more passionate about them. (And what is a yandere if not impassioned?)

Tying in with the above, it's a well-known fact that teens are often rebellious and try to shrug off social norms and expectations. Because of this - and an almost contradictory, innate desire to be accepted by those around them - it's not unheard of for them to grow into certain archetypes. Not "nerds" or "jocks" (though the following can certainly apply to the former group as well), but in this case, "goths," "emos," and similar ones - teenagers who frequently (or want to) wear black clothes and black makeup, dye their hair unnatural colors, and so on.

It's obvious that traditionally "darker" media usually appeals to these groups of people - things like horror movies and death metal. But what about a particular form of media that's consistently become more popular with American youth since the 90's: anime? Where Western cartoons, comics, and books fail to attract a young audience, anime - Japanese animation/cartoons - and its magazine-like counterpart, manga, often succeeds. It's common for anime to be targeted at teenagers, and it's also common for teens to watch it - especially ones with darker themes and characters.

Enter yanderes. Having already been impressionable enough to join a clique that takes part in gothic or similar cultures, it's easy to guess what might happen next: a person sees a fictional character they like, then tries to emulate them. In most cases, this doesn't go much further than simply buying and wearing an accessory worn by the same character, or doing something equally harmless. In more extreme cases, this can mean trying to mold their personality to be more similar to that of the character they idolize. This is sometimes rationalized by telling themself, "People clearly like this character; maybe if I was more like them, people would like me, too." Can you honestly say you've never witnessed someone who seems to think this to themself when they try to act like their favorite singer, celebrity, or anyone else they look up to?

Concluded in part three.

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Yandere origins, part one.

How are yanderes made? Are they born that way, do circumstances mold certain people into becoming yandere, or is it sometimes one and sometimes the other? All you have to do is ask yourself, "How many children do I know who have romantically pursued and obsessed over other children their age since early infancy?" And the answer is clear: it's not biologically ingrained from birth; yanderes gradually become so over time.

But what influences these people to become yanderes? The short answer is "a large number of possible things." To start off with, let's address the development of yanderes in fictional media. If you're familiar with them, you already know that origin stories only exist for a woefully small portion of them. Most of the time, a character is introduced, they're either immediately or eventually established to be a yandere, and that's that; the story doesn't satisfactorily explain why they're a yandere, which is disappointing.

In most cases, readers and viewers of these fictional stories are left to assume that a character is simply yandere because of their attraction to another character. However, this explains nothing. Imagine asking a social worker why they became one, and their response was, "Because I do social work." That only provides a comment on what they're doing in the present, not how they reached that point, just like this flimsy non-answer about how most fictional yandere come to be. "Because they're deeply in love" only comments on what they already are, not how they got there.

In some cases, their behavior is explained as having stemmed from abuse, severe misfortune, or life-impacting tragic occurrences. "So-and-so was traumatized by the mistreatment they received throughout their life. As the protagonist showed them kindness - which So-and-so wasn't used to - they felt the need to latch onto the protagonist and never let go, for the sake of their own well-being. This didn't take long to develop into obsessive love, turning them into a yandere." is arguably the most common explanation.

What about real yanderes, though? In nearly all cases, the word "yandere" is synonymous with "obsessive lover" when used to describe yanderes in the real world. Some people gradually become yandere for the above reason, but to be more specific: many people grow up with a persistent feeling that they aren't loved. This is especially true for teenagers when they see some of their peers forming romantic relationships and recognizing that they've never been in one themself. Eventually, many of them also find someone who seems to love them, while others don't until they're an adult.

Those who don't - and those who find what they believe to be love, but too little, too late - are most susceptible to becoming yanderes. If someone finally, after a great number of years, gives such a person the love and validation they so desperately needed, it's easy to imagine them clinging to the person who loves them. In a heart-wrenching twist, this often leads to their partner leaving them because they can't handle a relationship with someone so obsessive. This invariably devastates yanderes in this situation and may make them feel the need to be even clingier toward their next partner.

Continued in part two.

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Yandere: an overview of the word.

For those who are unfamiliar with the term "yandere," it refers to people - typically fictional characters - who are mentally ill, and whose illness is distinctly tied to romance. This manifests as obsessive love. While not formally recognized by the DSM-5, many therapists, counselors, psychiatrists, and so on are familiar with and use the terms "obsessive love" and "obsessive lover(s)." Obsessive love, as you may have already guessed, is love that's taken a little too far for most people's tastes. Walking a tightrope between romantic and creepy, obsessive lovers come in all shapes and sizes; there are those whose love is unrequited, there are those in relationships with a lover whose feelings are more socially acceptable, and there are those who are fortunate enough to enter into a relationship with one of their own kind.

To help put it in perspective: where a normal person might spend 5% of their time thinking about their lover while away from them, an obsessive lover may think of them 20% of the time or more while apart, assuming they don't intentionally try to distract themself with other things, for the sake of their mental well-being. And while a normal person might spend 5% of their paycheck on a gift for their partner, it's not uncommon for an obsessive lover to go overboard and spend 30% or more of their latest check on the person they love. If you only took into account facts like the previous two, you might begin to wonder why so few people actively seek out such a dedicated partner. The answer is that they - like all humans - have flaws, some of which are a direct result of their intense feelings of attraction toward others. It's my understanding that most people aren't fond of clinginess, and if you're one such person, then being with an obsessive lover isn't for you. Another trait of some obsessive lovers - one which is seldom seen outside of works of fiction - is violence.

It may surprise you that someone who feels affection to such an extreme extent could attack others, but when you think about it, can't you name a few historical figures off the top of your head that have waged wars over their desire for another person? How many times have you heard of acts of violence being committed when it was discovered that a person cheated on their lover? And surely you've heard of people attempting to kill their spouses - and sometimes succeeding - due to jealousy or only the suspicion that they may have cheated. Which abruptly brings us back to the term "yandere." It is a portmanteau of the Japanese words "yanderu," meaning "sick" or "ill," and "deredere," which means "sweet (in a romantic sense)" or "lovey dovey." Generally speaking, in Japanese media, yandere characters are portrayed as obsessive lovers - as expected - but another facet that a majority of noticeably yandere characters are given is a homicidal streak.

From general Esdeath to Gasai Yuno, from Aragaki Ayase to Sakuma Mayu, from Sengoku Nadeko to Senjougahara Hitagi, there's no shortage of mentally ill characters in Japanese media whose violent tendencies are a direct result of their love for another person. In most cases, their aggression is focused toward anyone they believe to be a threat to the person they love or their relationship (even though their target may not be a threat in any way at all). Rarely, they may be hostile toward their lover, nearly always justifying it as being "for their own good" or so their lover can't leave them. For example, they may be so far gone that they'll try to kill their lover, with the intent to keep their corpse to themself and speak to it on a daily basis as if their lover is still alive, but now unable to run away from them, disagree with them, cheat on them, and so forth. In other cases, they'll imprison them and keep them alive for the same purposes. And in a much smaller number of cases, they may try to kill their lover solely because they find the thought of it romantic.

Non-violent characters who are clearly, unquestionably yandere are so uncommon compared to the ones who are violent that many people believe that violence is a required trait for a character or person to be considered a yandere. But if we look at the above paragraph, it's easy to see that those violent tendencies are a direct result of obsessive love. First, a character is an obsessive lover. Next, because of that, they act violently toward anyone they believe could threaten their relationship with the object of their affection. Never is it the other way around, because it makes no sense for a yandere - or anyone for that matter - to become enraged and attempt to murder someone because they held hands with a person they do not care about, and then develop an intense romantic attraction toward that stranger afterward for no reason whatsoever. Now that we've established this sequential order in which yanderes fall head over heels in love, and optionally afterward, murder anyone who so much as smiles at the person they love, it's not difficult to understand the cause and effect at play.

Since one must always preclude the other - if the other even happens at all - for a yandere to exist by either definition ("a yandere only needs to be an obsessive lover" or "a yandere can only truly be called a yandere if they're both an obsessive lover and homicidal), it should be obvious that the first factor - whether or not they're an obsessive lover - is a yandere's defining trait. Without obsessive love and with homicidal urges that they manage to fulfill, they are only a murderer, plain and simple. With obsessive love and without homicidal urges, a stalker is still a stalker; a yandere is still a yandere. To those who might say, "But the word 'yandere' is based on the word 'yanderu'! Therefore, all yanderes should be defined by whether or not they're mentally ill; romance has nothing to do with it!" I say, "You're focusing on only one half of the word 'yandere.' You're completely forgetting the other half, 'deredere,' which encompasses the romantic aspects of yanderes." This paragraph and the above paragraph call to mind the term "yangire," which describes a type of character who - at a glance  - appears similar to many yandere characters. The "gire" portion of the term is derived from "gire," meaning "to cut" or "to snap."

While a yandere may act violently due to their extreme love for another person, a yangire simply snaps, as the term implies. Their actions and motivations have nothing to do with the romantic (deredere) feelings of a yandere. These characters are clearly mentally disturbed, but usually behave somewhat logically - often, yangire are violent because they're sadists, at least while actively behaving like a yangire. It would be a challenge to find one yangire who killed people without ever enjoying it for every three that evidently do enjoy it.

In short: all yanderes are obsessive lovers, but not all yanderes are homicidal, because their feelings of obsessive love must exist prior to the violent acts occurring in the first place, as motivation. Without obsessive love, a homicidal character is only a murderer or a yangire, not a yandere.


If you liked this article you'll also enjoy this one, which goes over why yanderes exist (and change over time.)

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