Hi there stalker, fuck off

For several weeks now I have been receiving harassing messages off a man I met for a date back in November. I was reluctant to give him airtime because that’s no doubt exactly the sort of attention he wants, but his messages are no longer those of a typical rejected male but those of a creep and a stalker.

He told me his name was Chris although he now claims that’s not his real name. We met through the dating app Plenty of Fish and had been chatting for a week or so when we met. His messages were sweet if not somewhat intense, telling me I was beautiful, gorgeous, sexy – all those things a girl likes to hear even if it seems incredulous coming from someone you hardly know.

He would message me from the time he got up to the time he went to bed and I’ll admit I wrote back and didn’t discourage it. He seemed like a nice guy, genuine I suppose. We shared a lot in those messages including photos.

The night before our date at the beach, he asked me for more details about my sexual history, which you all know is quite colourful. I didn’t lie and I didn’t withhold if he asked me a direct question. Honesty is my new policy and I apply it to all areas of my life. The way he responded to my history surprised me. He seemed judgemental, especially regarding my behaviour during the final year of my marriage. I appreciate that there are people who won’t agree with my actions but I strongly dislike people casting judgement on me. I expressed this to him via message and suggested we call the date off. In fact, I outright told him not to come. He said he still was.

The next day, I again asked him not to come and he said he was already on his way. He lived about an hour north. We arranged to meet at my local beach but I was apprehensive. His comments the night before didn’t align with our previous conversations and I felt we were likely going to be a poor match.

We met at the surf club with a friendly peck on the cheek and wandered down to the flags to set up for the day. I spread my towel on the sand and he lay his, not just next to mine, but overlapping my towel. Already I felt he was invading my personal space. We lay on the sand, a little too close for my immediate comfort, and talked. Or I should say, he talked.

To be fair, I have learnt in the past year to become a very active listener, and would encourage him to continue with questions. The talk was mostly about his career, of which he was obviously passionate, and as he spoke I realised that work dominated his life. Given my current situation, having not worked for several months by choice, I knew our values were, in that moment, vastly different.

After our messaging, excepting the previous night’s conversation, I had thought I was genuinely interested in this man. He was funny, if not a dry sense of humour, and he seemed to worship me although I now realise this was a terrible trait to base a relationship on.

Via message he had commented frequently about my body, my eyes, my breasts. Infatuated wouldn’t be an exaggeration. I was wary of it when we messaged but sometimes the ego blocks the warning signs my gut told me were there.

Now, actually laying there on the beach, I felt nothing but mild alarm. I knew I wasn’t interested in pursuing this, knew I wasn’t interested in sleeping with him. I didn’t feel the connection I had thought was there in our messages. It just felt wrong. I felt like I was waiting for a spark that never came.

Nonetheless, we had a swim and spent a couple of hours roasting in the sun before I suggested we grab lunch. He had finally stopped talked about himself and asked me about some of my previous relationships and I felt the mood change instantly.

We grabbed fish and chips from a nearby takeaway and ate in a park by the water. He sat close by me, touching my arm, my waist, at every opportunity. I was still waiting to feel that attraction but it wasn’t there. I couldn’t fake it and I didn’t return the casual touches.

After lunch, we walked to the headland and sat on a bench watching the waves roll in across a rock platform. We sat side by side and I told him that I didn’t see us going anywhere. I explained that I thought he and I had different values at the current time and possibly not much in common. I also said that we lived an hour apart and realistically it would be a difficult relationship to maintain. This was probably me grasping at straws but I wanted to make it clear I didn’t want to pursue this.

He listened and didn’t put up an argument so I presumed he’d accepted my decision not to date further. We walked to the car park and there said goodbye. He opened his arms for a hug, which I was happy to oblige with, but he made to kiss me and I turned my head. He held me and I could hear him breathing heavily into my ear. It was awkward but I did not want to kiss him.

He pulled away and turned to walk to his car. I called out for him to drive safe and he didn’t even look back. I knew he was not happy with how I had left it, but there was nothing that I would change. I walked home.

Within half an hour, I received the first message from him, wanting to know what had changed and why I didn’t like him. I explained to him again my reasons, just as I had when we’d been sitting on the bench. Then his messages became angry, accusing me of wasting his time, wasting his day off work, that I should just admit I thought he was fat or ugly.

I was insulted because it wasn’t a physical thing at all. The connection wasn’t there for me and I felt wary of his infatuation. His messages continued, telling me I was a bitch among other things, and I stopped replying. His last message that day told me to have a nice life and that he would be paying off his two houses tomorrow. Clearly he knew even less about me than I had supposed if he thought that would impress me. I thought that once he had vented and got it out of his system, he would move on and that would be that.

But it wasn’t. The messages continued, sporadically, for several days, and then days became weeks and his messages more harassing, erratic and abusive. He sent me videos of him masturbating while he talked, telling me how much he wanted to fuck me. The next day a photo of his penis with the words “I want to be inside you (my name)” written on it. I told him to stop contacting me, that it was inappropriate and that I was seeing someone.

That was a mistake because then he wanted to know who they were, when I’d met them, if I’d been seeing them when he and I met. I told him nothing about the person I was seeing and simply said I had met them at about the same time. He assumed incorrectly that I was seeing ChrisNotChris again and wasn’t interested in anything I had to say. There’ll be more about ChrisNotChris in the coming weeks.

He started to tell me I was crazy, an idiot, and that when I came to my senses I should contact him. That he would fuck me right. That he would be the best fuck of my life. I deleted the messages and blocked him.

On New Year’s Eve, well after midnight, he messaged me to say he loved me, then followed it by saying “I meant Happy New Year”. I didn’t respond.

While his messages were blocked, they were still coming in to my kik chats, which I could see piling up in my inbox. And that’s when I started to get concerned. He started mentioning my mum, my ex-husband, what they looked like. He started using my full name and it was evident he had been looking at my Facebook. This troubled me because my Facebook privacy settings are tight and I review them regularly. I wasn’t even friends with my ex on Facebook anymore and my mum and I have different surnames.

Then he began to threaten me, making comments about how my previous drug use would be seen by my employer, that it was frowned upon by government departments. That I would be lucky to work again. Given that he allegedly worked for a federal government department, I took this seriously but stupidly I engaged.

I told him not to threaten me. I asked him to stop messaging me. I told him again how inappropriate it was. And I told him I thought his behaviour was stalker-like. It had been more than a month since our failed date. I couldn’t understand why he hadn’t moved on.

His messages became more and more disjointed, telling me in short spats of words that perhaps his name wasn’t Chris, that he was married, that he had a girlfriend, that he had many girlfriends. That he had made his girlfriend leave her husband, that he had gotten her pregnant and she’d miscarried. That he cheated on her all the time, had been doing it for eight years, that maybe he didn’t even work, that he girlfriend earned so much he didn’t need to work.

A few clicks you can find out a lot about someone. Their surprise wedding, their climb to base camp.

You don’t play for eight years and slip up 😊

It’s like I don’t exist lol
Who am I? Am I even Chris?
Maybe my girl earns so much I don’t have to work lol
Who knows. It’s just been a game for me
I think that’s the aspect I enjoy the most.
Did I say I had a gf? Ahah. I get confused sometimes.

I screenshot his messages and deleted the conversation. I blocked him and shared my concerns with the man I’m seeing. I didn’t like having threats made but was more concerned about his access to information that he shouldn’t have been able to see.

Chris is clearly unstable and what’s truth and what’s lies doesn’t even matter. I know he’s reading this because in the final messages before I deactivated my social media accounts he had told me he thought this blog was predictable, long and boring. And on this post, I agree. Chris, you are predictable and boring but from everything I have seen, you aren’t long. So, fuck off.