When Relationships Become Dangerous

Most men don't want to talk about it.

Becoming the target of a woman's obsessive nature and being unable to extricate themselves from it when a relationship is over makes a man look weak and cowardly, they say.

Quite a few refuse to believe it can even happen. And yet, it does happen, as one Navy officer remembers vividly about a year-long relationship he tried to end with a petite, pretty blond named Linda.

"I didn't believed it could happen either," Ben said. "But when it does, you find out there are women who become obsessed when they can't let go. The trouble is, you don't find out until it's too late."

It turned out to be too late for Ben last January. After living with Linda for most of the previous year - a woman he'd met through friends while on leave back home in the Midwest and believed was Miss Right at the start of their romance - he made the difficult decision to end their relationship.

Even though Linda had always been extremely loving and attentive to his needs, things in general just didn't seem "right." She was incredibly insecure about the time he spent on the ship he was assigned to and called him constantly. She made surprise visits to check up on him during the workday.

Whenever the ship went out to sea, she badgered neighbors and friends with her worries about him non-stop. She also ran up outrageous Western Union charges on their phone bill sending him telegrams, accusing him when he returned of partying, cheating, and having too much fun being away from her, regardless of how much reassurance he gave her before and after every cruise.

Eventually, Ben's relationship with Linda reached such restrictive proportions that he felt like he couldn't breathe anymore. One evening as they left the pier together following a month-long deployment that had given him ample time for soul searching, he tried to tell her as gently as he could that he was moving out.

"I needed some space," he said. "Not knowing at the time, of course, that space was the last thing Linda could handle."

But Linda quickly let him know. She continually left notes on his windshield, gifts on his doorstep. Every time he turned around, she was there. Whenever the phone rang at midnight, he knew who was calling.

She followed him to clubs on the weekends, kept him under surveillance on the base, tearfully hung on all of his friends for comfort.

In the beginning, he tried to be understanding. She was hurting over their break-up, after all. But when her urgent pleas for him to come back transformed into veiled threats of doing harm to him and anyone else who happened to be a part of his life, Ben knew it was time to draw the line.

"I told her to leave me alone and find somebody else, because I wasn't coming back," he said. "And I was stupid enough to believe her when she said, 'Okay.'"

That's when life for a guy who just wanted his freedom suddenly became an exercise in worry over what kind of trouble was going to come his way next.

He had the windows on his new truck broken twice. The tires were slashed and the paint badly scratched. He couldn't prove it, but he knew the damage was done by Linda.

One night, a bag of trash was set on fire outside his door. Luckily, a buddy sleeping over smelled the smoke. Another night, a girl Ben had been dancing with was attacked in the restroom afterward by a woman with a wire hair brush.

"She wasn't hurt, thank God," he said, "But I know the woman who did it had to be Linda."

Rather than going through legal channels, Ben tried to do what he could to resolve the situation on his own.

He stopped taking her phone calls and walked past her when she confronted him in public. He asked his friends to be look-outs when they went places and to ignore her ploys for sympathy when he wasn't around. Surprisingly, these tactics seemed to work so well, he heard a few weeks later that she'd started dating someone else.

Finally, Ben felt comfortable enough to resume a normal single life, and he, too, started dating someone. Only to wake with a start one night about a month later to find Linda standing next to the bed looking down at him and his new girlfriend.

"I lost it when that happened," he said. "I grabbed her and threw her out the door, letting her know that if she ever did something like that again, I'd probably kill her."

That's when, in a flurry of obscenities, she let it slip that she'd bought a gun.

Most of us have a tendency to think that emotional dramas like this are only played out in the movies or are given write-ups in the papers as conflicts in the lives of strangers that have ended in tragic violence. The truth is, no matter how well you might know the person you are involved with, nobody really knows what an obsessive person will do when suddenly faced with rejection.

What can you do if you find the person you once cared for is panicking over feelings of abandonment and won't leave you alone?

Experts on the subject say there's a lot you can do. For instance, if you've become the target of someone who has an obsessive nature, don't try to reason with an irrational mind. Get an unlisted phone number and return letters and gifts unopened. Leave public places when he or she arrives. Refuse to tolerate the harassment you're receiving by calling the police and getting a restraining order, rather than trying to handle the situation on your own.

Ben says he didn't wait to find out if Linda intended to use that gun or not. He went to court and sought an order of protection in late April. He enforced that order with a call to the police every time she violated it. Before long, Linda realized he was serious about ending the relationship they'd once had and finally let go for good.

"She doesn't live here anymore," he said with a sigh, "And you can be sure, even though it happened once, this is one guy who won't ever get into a situation like that again."

As much as we wish they wouldn't, unfortunately some relationships do become dangerous - especially when one partner decides to bring an unhappy relationship to a close. I have perceived quite a few potentially dangerous relationships over the years among my clientele and I always advise them to avoid these relationships at all cost.

That's the beauty of having such insight about future relationships before they even take shape in our lives. To