Types of stalkers:
Simple Obsession Stalkers
These stalkers have previously been involved in an intimate relationship with their victims. Often the victim has attempted to call off the relationship but the stalker simply refuses to accept it. These stalkers suffer from personality disorders, including being emotionally immature, extremely jealous, insecure, have low self-esteem and quite often feel powerless without the relationship.
While reconciliation is the goal, this stalker believes they must have a specific person back or they will not survive.
The stalker of former spouses or intimate partners, are often domineering and abusive to their partners during the relationship and use this domination as a way to bolster their own low self esteem. The control the abusers exert over their partners gives them a feeling of power they can't find elsewhere. They try to control every aspect of their partner's lives. Their worst fear is losing people over whom they have control.
When they realize this fear as the relationship finally does end, the stalker suddenly believes that his/her life is destroyed. Their total identity and feelings of self-worth are tied up in the power experienced through their domineering and abusive relationship. Without this control, they feel that they will have no self-worth and no identity. They will become nobodies and in desperation they begin stalking, trying to regain their partner and the basis of their power.
It is this total dependence on their partner for identity and feelings of self worth that makes these stalkers so very dangerous. They will often go to any length and stop at nothing to get their partner back. If they can't have the people over whom they can exert dominance and total control, their lives are truly not worth living. Unfortunately, along with becoming suicidal, they also often want to kill the intimate partner who have left them.
Stalking does not always begin with violence or trying to terrorize, it usually starts with, "Can I just talk to you or meet with you one last time?" " If you just talk to me I'll leave you alone." According to experts, "He wants her back, and she won't come back." Everything escalates from there and sometimes he snaps and assaults or kills her. In his mind, he makes the decision, "If I can't have you, no one else will." When he says this, he is attempting to cover his fear that she'll meet another man and leave him. Far too often, the police find that these stalkers follow through on their threats, killing the victims and then many times committing suicide. For them, death is better than having to face humiliation of the stalking victim leaving them for someone else, and the humiliation of having to face their own powerlessness.
II. Love Obsession Stalkers
These are individuals who become obsessed with or fixed on a person with whom they have had no intimate or close relationship. The victim may be a friend, a business acquaintance, a person met only once, or even a complete stranger.
Love obsession stalkers believe that a special, often mystical, relationship exists between them and their victims. Any contact with the victim becomes a positive reinforcement of this relationship and any wavering (even the slightest) of the victim from an absolute "NO" is seen as an invitation to continue the pursuit.
These stalkers will often read sexual meanings into neutral responses from the victim. They are often loners with an emotional void in their lives. Any contact with the object of the infatuation, even negative, helps fill this void. Failed relationships are the rule among these individuals.
Many suffer from erotomania. They have the delusion that they are loved intensely by another person, usually a person of higher socioeconomic status than them or an unattainable public figure. They are totally convinced that the stalking victim loves them dearly and truly, and would return their affection except for some external influence.
During questioning, police find that most love obsession stalkers have fantasized a complete relationship with the person they are stalking. When they attempt to act out this fantasy in real life, they expect the victim to return the affection. When no affection is returned, the stalker often reacts with threats and intimidation. When the threats and intimidation don't accomplish what they hoped, the stalker can often become violent and even deadly.
Stranger Stalking
While being stalked by someone with whom the victim has had an intimate relationship, or by someone known to the victim who has perhaps attempted unsuccessfully to establish an intimate relationship, is frightening enough, at least the victim knows who the stalker is, what he or she is capable of, and what to likely expect. Because the stalker is unknown to them, the stalking takes on a much more frightening feeling. Because the stalker is unknown to the victim, the victim has no idea who to be on the lookout for, who to be careful of or around, and who to speak to and who to avoid.
Although the danger level connected with stranger stalking may not in actuality be higher, the stress level most certainly is. Most experts will tell you that stranger stalking can be one of the most terrifying of all stalking situations as experts don't know how to deal with it.
Often a stranger stalker suffers from erotomania; a mental disorder that causes the stalker to believe another person is in love with him or her. Due to this disorder, a stranger stalker may fantasize either that they have had an intimate relationship with their victim or that their victim truly loves them and wants to have an intimate relationship with them.
CID
