Infuriating woman harrassing me.

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This is a long story but I will try very hard to be brief. Two years ago I met a man nearly old enough to be my father. He had a girlfriend and a 9-month-old baby girl. We hit it off immediately and became close friends. Unfortunately, his girlfriend is very much the jealous type. When she heard about his friendship with a younger woman (she's only a few years older than me), she told him she wanted to meet me. He warned me that she had started going slightly crazy a few months after having the baby and to be careful, but I wasn't worried. I was bullied when I was a kid, but I've never had a personal problem with anyone as an adult.

Short short version: I thought we made friends, she seemed really nice, and I loved their baby. Then a few months later she went nuts. She discovered that he and I were speaking almost every day, which is apparently more than he told her about out of fear of her jealousy. She accused us of having an affair. Over the next year she went back and forth between telling me I was destroying her family and if I ever talked to her boyfriend again she'd kill herself or the baby or both, and then apologizing profusely, telling me she was just stressed and hormonal and she didn't mean it and could I please forgive her so we could all be friends. For a long time I went along with it, trying to keep my distance but also keep my friendship with this guy, who I just clicked with in a way I never had with anyone before.

A few months ago she went completely nuts and sat outside my apartment for hours (I wasn't even home), calling and texting me and all my friends nonstop and saying if I didn't meet her somewhere she'd call the police and have me deported and all my friends thrown in jail (using "evidence" of something she couldn't name). She has physically attacked people before so I didn't dare meet her face to face, and just avoided her until she finally left. After that I decided this just wasn't worth it and I wasn't going to try to appease her anymore. But she won't let it go.

Last night there was a big party at a club where some of my friends were DJing and she showed up. She followed me around half the night demanding answers to questions that didn't make sense, like why won't I just accept that I've torn her family apart and all their problems are my fault? Why do I support her boyfriend in his desire to move out of her house and get his own apartment? Why am I always taking his side? What has she ever done to me that I'm treating her so badly? (I say she tried to get me deported and she said that was MY fault for being so "unreasonable" and refusing to talk to her.) She knows just exactly the things to say to make me angry and she's constantly getting under my skin. I try to walk away from her and she just follows me. I had a backstage pass and she didn't, so I went in the back room to relax for a bit, then after a few minutes she talked her way past the security guard and sat next to me, demanding to know why I refused to talk to her, and taking my avoidance of her as evidence of my guilt. She is obsessed with me and no matter what I say, she won't just go away. In the end I had to leave the party, where I was having a great time until she started talking to me, and I went home angry and was unable to sleep.

I'm completely at a loss now. At this point, despite everything, I'd even be willing to end my friendship with this guy if it meant getting some peace, but it wouldn't make a difference anyway. Even if I never spoke to him again, she'd assume we were secretly communicating and it'd be even worse. I've thought about calling the police, but the legal system in this country isn't very helpful towards harassment and the police generally refuse to get involved with "personal" disputes unless there is physical injury. She has attacked people in the past (she knocked one of her boyfriend's sister's teeth out), but she's clever enough not to do anything in front of any authorities. She's also very good at acting perfectly reasonable and normal and sane when she wants to be, so there's no way to prove she's crazy.

I don't know what to do. I just want this crazy woman to leave me alone and let me get on with my life. Does anyone have any advice? What would you do?

Do you have a local crime victims counsel or something similar? They might be able to give you some pointers on how to handle this. Sorry you are going through such a horrible time! What state do you live in?

I live in Prague, in the Czech Republic. Central Europe. Until 20 years ago it was communist, and they have a very different attitude towards these things than in the west. I think I can sum it up this way: there is a common saying, "don't put out the fire if it's not burning you." A few organizations are finally springing up to help with things like child abuse, but harassment of one adult by another is generally regarded with a "not my problem" kind of attitude by the police and the general public. I think if it was a man harassing me I might be able to get some help, but a woman, especially a mother of a 2-year-old child, would never be seen as a threat by most people.

I would document down what she has said or done to you and then hand it over to the police to deal with. I would consider ending the friendship with that guy because of her behavior and then telling her that if she does not stop that she will have to be reported end of story. My advice would be to try and contact the police if she is going to treat you like that. What she is doing is very dangerous.


As for her illness, it sounds like someone who is pathological in that she enjoys hurting other people who do not meet her standards. You also sounds very manipulative and used the "Killing herself and the baby," as a line to get attention and get her way. I have a sister's who has a boyfriend who acts like that with her. He has been known to call her late at night and mention that he's really depressed and will kill himself if she doesn't see him.

Again, I would cut these people from your life completely and do whatever you can to protect yourself.

I agree with Miyah. No friendship is worth that much hassle! You can find better friends without dangerous baggage attached.

If possible, get a restraining order put against her.

She isn't in the USA. I don't think they have such things where she is.

What you have is a bona-fide stalker. It's very difficult to deal with stalkers, especially in countries that don't have anti-stalking laws or restraining orders for situations like this.

First, I would cut off the relationship with this crazy woman's husband. It's too bad you have to lose a friend, but you are in great danger.

Second, get those kinds of bright floodlights that are motion-activated outside your house, so that she can't sneak around your doors and windows in the dark. If she comes close, those bright lights will illuminate her and hopefully frighten her away.

If she has the propensity for violence, you might need to keep a weapon like MACE on you at all times. If she begins following you threateningly, scream "GET AWAY FROM ME!! !" as loud as you can and get ready to give her a blast of pepper-spray in the face.

If she sits next to you at a party or in a social gathering, loudly say "STOP FOLLOWING ME AROUND, I'M NOT INTERESTED IN YOU!" so that everyone around you can hear this. Then move away from her quickly. If she still tries to follow you, everyone will be staring at her since they'll be alerted that you're being followed against your will. It will make her seem like a lesbian who's in love with you, and that will embarrass her. She won't look so "reasonable and innocent" then!

I've tried ending the friendship before but it doesn't matter. She'll assume we're secretly friends even if we're not, and she knows where I live. Anyway I hardy see the guy anymore. I have other problems with him that are unrelated to her. But we have all the same friends and there's no way I can avoid seeing either him or her altogether.

Regarding the police, she's not doing anything illegal. They won't care.

Regarding her illness, yes, she's completely insane. It's probably not her fault, I'm sure she had a crappy childhood or something, but it doesn't make it okay. I think she's genuinely mad - she honestly believes that she's done nothing wrong and everyone is out to get her. She alters her own memory to convince herself that certain things never happened (like attacking her boyfriend's sister or promising or admitting certain things). She honestly believes that she has the right to tell everyone around her what to do, and if they refuse, they're being unreasonable. She always talks to me with the tone of a mother scolding a child who's being stubborn. One of these days, I keep telling myself, she will give this BS to the wrong person and have her own teeth bust in. In fact, she's the first person who's ever caused me to have a violent impulse. Before I left the party last night I found myself desperate to just pound the arrogance right out of her. But both of us are smart enough not to throw the first punch in front of any witnesses, and I'm smart enough to never be alone with her...

The latest bad news is that apparently she's gotten a diagnosis from a doctor (in her words, a nice official piece of paper) that there's something wrong with her thyroid after having the baby, and she's blaming any previous unreasonable behavior on that. Now that she's being treated for it, she's 100% confident that everything she does is completely reasonable. If she's having a one-on-one conversation with someone, she either screams at them or scolds them like children. If there's more than one person and only one of them knows the truth, she uses lies (which she temporarily believes are true) and blackmail to convince the other one to join her side. If there's more than one person and no one is on her side, she just accuses everyone of "ganging up on her" and refuses to listen to anything they say. I don't know if she's bipolar or just psychotic or what. But there's no way to prove it, and without proof, there's no chance of legal help in this country.

I live in a basement apartment near the city center. She can't get into my flat, but there's nothing preventing her from standing on the street, and in fact she has done so several times screaming her head off. After years of communism, people in this country keep their heads down and out of other peoples' business, no matter what.

I might consider getting some pepper spray. It's easy to get it at the Vietnamese markets here and I don't think it's too expensive. She generally doesn't follow me though, or at least it's only very rarely. She just shows up at social events. And if I took out pepper spray at a club, I'd be the one being taken away by the police.

I did yell at her to stop following me and leave me alone, but no one cares. Everyone at this club knows her and her crap, and again, no one wants to get involved. She doesn't get embarrassed. At all. She doesn't care what anyone thinks, and in this country, it won't matter.

I'm starting to think there's nothing I can do. She's just going to ruin all social events forever and I can't stop her. Especially if she can talk her way into the back room even without a pass...

Gun law is still very lax in the Czech Republic. Might she consider buying a weapon?

You say you're an 'immigrant'… are you from another EU country?

I'm from the US originally, but I'm living here permanently. I doubt if she would think to get a weapon. She doesn't plan things far enough in advance for that. She just rolls with whatever crazy ideas are in her head at the moment and insists that she has always and will always hold the opinions she does right now. "That never happened" and then in the same breath "well when that happened you were being a jerk" and then without even adding punctuation "that never happened" again. The day she camped outside my apartment she was apparently on her way to an appointment with her therapist, then changed plans while driving there. I certainly hope she would never think to buy a weapon. All it would take would be one burst of anger and someone would be dead.

Fortunately, while gun laws are not strict, actual guns are pretty rare. Cops carry guns, but they're not really allowed to use them unless they're already being shot at, and even then they would be heavily investigated to make sure they really needed to resort to shooting.

Is she Czech? Can you speak Czech?

It definitely sounds like she is a psychopath because she is constantly trying to use her disability as an excuse to get attention and get her way. You might want to read this and see what your potential rights are over there.

http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_t ... _1099.html

Thanks for the link, Miyah, I'll have a look.

Yes, she is Czech. I can speak some Czech, I'm learning, but not enough to describe the situation well to the police. I'd have to have a friend help me translate if it ever came to that. Fortunately, most of my friends are Czech and are very familiar with the situation, so hopefully they'd help me out. On the other hand, most of the time they're just as eager as most Czechs to keep their heads down and not get involved.