Previous Ask Bear columns for The Butter can be found here. If you have a question for Bear, The Butter’s advice columnist, send it along to asking.bear@gmail.com.
Dear Bear,
I had a thing with a boy. In the way that one does sometimes. To make a long story short it turned out that he wanted more from the situation than I was willing to give, something he made clear via a multiple paragraph Facebook message, and so I ended things. I very specifically ended them. I have not responded to a single message since.
There have been lots of messages, however. At last count 48 messages that have gone without a response. Yet here I am months later and messages keep coming. What do I do? I was clear when I ended things, and have ghosted for like five months now. But it’s not working. I don’t want to have a conversation, I just want to stop getting text messages from this boy (I would use the word man but it seems like an exaggeration considering the above mentioned behavior, though he is for sure old enough to be a man if he had those skills). How do I make it stop?
***
[Dear Brave Correspondent, thank you for your letter. Since you’re not actually the one who requires the advice here, I am choosing to write to the one who does – this boy person. Just forward him the link.]
Dear Misguided Dude,
Well, here we are. You’ve clicked the link that that girl sent you, and now you’re reading an advice column. Are you a little unclear still on what’s happening? Here’s the advice: stop messaging her. This includes Facebook messaging and texts and Instagram comments and kik and whatever else has developed in the eleven hours I have been out of the country. Including notes in her locker/on her bike basket/on the windshield of her car. Stop it.
But I don’t want to just drop a bomb and then dip, plus that’s less “advice” and more “bad news.” So, today, I am going to teach you about how to tell whether someone actually likes you/still likes you and wants to hear from you or not.
I only partly blame you for not knowing, Misguided Dude. Media is saturated with these narratives of girls who don’t especially like some boy until he gets worrisomely close to stalking her, whereupon she suddenly becomes impressed with his devotion and magically understands that she has loved him the entire time? So I kind of get why you could imagine that forty-eight unreplied-to messages across four different platforms since March might constitute optimism and dedication, as opposed to what it really is (hint: some bullshit, is what. Humans do not work that way.)
So: how do you know? Here are some things a girl or woman might do, if she likes you. (Really, they’re things a person might do, but since I was handed a heterosexual pairing I am going to carry on with it to avoid confusion. Many of these will cross apply, fellow homos.)
She will reply. She will respond to your messages. She might not reply immediately, even if she has seen them and you can tell because the internetly devices like to let you know exactly when an eyeball may have skimmed your message. But if you message her today, during daylight hours, you’ll hear back today before bedtime unless she is out of the country or similarly in extremis. If she doesn’t respond to a single message, it’s cool to follow up with a couple more. After that, babe, either she dropped her phone in the toilet or she doesn’t like you back.
She will counterpropose if she has to say no. Let’s say you text her with an offer to grab breakfast on Friday morning (I am giving you the benefit of the doubt that you know to suggest an actual plan). If she writes back and says “sorry, can’t,” she might like you back, or she might be hoping that you’ll get a hint soonish. But if she likes you, and she has an important meeting or morning prayers or has to take her kids to school or whatever, she will counter propose: “Can’t manage breakfast Friday, sorry. Lunch? Or breakfast Tuesday?’ That’s someone saying “Hey, I want to hang out with you, I just can’t at the proposed time. But soon?” This is a good sign.
She’ll suggest or accept dates that have no built-in fun, only what the two of you bring to it. When you say “Hey, I need to go pick up my pants at the tailor. Want to ride along? It’s annoyingly far, but I’ll play you good music!” she will say yes. She’ll say yes to tagging along on ridiculous missions, just for the company. She will invite you to do things like help her pick out shoes for her cousin’s Bar Mitzvah.
Here’s what she won’t do, Misguided Dude. She won’t mysteriously be busy all the times you ask her to do something, she won’t take days to return a text (or fail to return it at all, or fail to return it and forty-seven of it’s misguided brethren, dude, seriously). She’s not playing hard to get, her phone does work, she’s not (unless she has previously mentioned it) on a last-minute work trip to the interior of Ghana or upstate New York (Finger Lakes Region, I’m looking at you). If she really wants to hear from you, she will stand on one leg on the roof of her kid brother’s playhouse to make sure she gets her texts, you can bet on that.
Now, listen. I know this is hard news. I don’t mean to be abrupt with you, but I am concerned about this thing where months of silence after being told it was over doesn’t seem like a compelling argument to STOP. But I do know how hard it can be to like someone who doesn’t like you back. It’s an awful place to be, in the longing and longing, like someone pried open your ribcage and left it swinging wide while they went to see if there was any more beer. I don’t envy you, and I hope it’s over soon. But please, Misguided Dude, don’t also make things hard for her by not taking the hint. Frock up, take this one on by yourself, and in the fullness of time there will be another chance to try again fresh with someone else. Pinky swear.
(BUT ALSO DON’T TEXT HER TO SAY THANKS FOR THE LINK. JESUS HARRIET CHRIST SINGING BITCH BETTER HAVE MY MONEY WHILE GOING OVER NIAGARA FALLS IN A BARREL WEARING A FRUIT HAT, SON, PUT YOUR PHONE DOWN.)
(AHEM.)
Love and courage,
Bear
Tags: advice, ask bear, S Bear Bergman, the butter
Well! You’re a lot nicer than I would have been!
was not expecting ODB reference in the coda.
Dear Brave Correspondent, it’s remarkably easy (and free!) to block numbers for like 6 months, at least on Verizon. Worked for me!
Bear, you are my favorite. Not completely sure which category of “favorite” you fall into specifically, but you are my favorite.
Do not send him this link!
Bear has been incredibly generous here. I don’t know this guy, but my instinct is to say: he does not think he still has a chance with you and just needs to prove his love. There is no way he does not understand what 48 (FORTY-FUCKING-EIGHT) unanswered messages mean.
The guy is trying to get a reaction out of you. He’s testing to see how much power he can have over you. He was testing your boundaries by asking for more of a relationship than you said you wanted, and now he’s testing to see how long it takes to wear you down.
Block everything you can block. Ignore what you can’t and send it to a folder you never look at in case you need documentation.
Bear’s advice is good for the guy who has sent fewer than ten messages. It is not good for the guy who has sent forty-eight messages. The first guy might be misguided. But everything I know about creepy guys tells me that the second guy is not misguided; he is scary and the less you engage with him the better.
I agree. Block, block, and block some more.
I agree. A good dude would have already gotten Bear’s message. A not-good dude will read Bear’s kind advice and his take away will be that you think about him so much you have to write a stranger on the internet for help and if he writes another 48 messages you’ll respond again.
And a really not-good dude may read the link and get mad at being chastised in public. Regardless of what type of dude this particular dude is, there is a very slim chance he will read this and actually, honestly, learn from it.
(Though it is great and lovely and very well written and I love Bear and Bear’s advice!)
Co-signed. This guy has no respect for boundaries, other than the effort it may take to break them. He will totally read this advice letter the completely wrong (for you) way.
Yes! I was concerned when I scrolled down and did not see, “Block that user, but keep screen shots in case you later need to go to the police.”
Or at the very least DO NOT ENGAGE in big sparkly letters.
I also agree! I’ve been stalked and this is setting off all kinds of alarms for me. Document everything, do not respond. What worked for me was getting a no-contact order, but in some cases that just pisses them off more.
Also agreed! If you respond after 48 messages, you are teaching him that he needs to send 48 messages to get you to respond!
EXACTLY! It’s already been referenced below, but The Gift of Fear (Gavin DeBecker) has a really good chapter on this. The only way to respond to stalkers and potential stalkers is: do not respond. If you respond after 48, or 408, or 4,008 messages, all they’ve learned is that it takes that many messages to get through to you.
Yes! A thousand times yes! He is either scary manipulative or scary genuinely mentally unwell. Either way, responding in any way whatsoever is teaching him how many times he needs to contact her in order to get a reaction.
The Gift of Fear by Gavin DeBecker has a great chapter on stalkers and how best to respond to them (usually: don’t).
Yes! Came to the comments to say, “NOOOOOOOOOOO! DO NOT SEND HIM THIS LINK. MAINTAIN GHOST PROTOCOL AND DOCUMENT THE FUCK OUT OF HIS MESSAGE HISTORY.”
Mutual acquaintances should not be giving him any information about you, if they are, stop contact with them also.
Months?! Ugh, how frustrating. Do you have mutual friends with this dude, who you can give a heads up about his not-getting-it? Or screenshots of those texts? Part of me is worried that his insistence is going to escalate into something scarier, or he’s going to make you look like the bad guy to friends, and thinks you should save some evidence. (Heeeyyyy emotional labor alert, bill him for any time you spend doing that.)
This dude is why we also need an “Ask a Bear” column. A bear would know what to do with him.
“Send a Bear”
Exit, pursued by a bear.
I feel sort of validated by this, thank you for writing it. I had a similar thing happen maybe two years back, but instead of it being a person that I had A Romanticish Thing with, it was a woman who was a friend-of-circumstance (read: same dorm) my freshman year but not a close friend. I thought after we moved out of the dorm we’d drift out of each other’s lives but it didn’t quite happen like that, she’d keep trying to make plans and I’d occasionally accept out of guilt (& because she was half-dating one of my good friends) but mostly would do as above: say “sorry, can’t” with no counteroffers, delay in responding to texts, only see her at large group events and never one-on-one.
One Friday night she confronted me in the middle of a street, screaming and calling me a “bitch” & a horrible person and so on. I’ve been scared of her since; we’ve graduated but live in the same city and I have avoided all alumni events like the plague because I don’t want to have to deal with it. The only reason I keep her on facebook (on severely limited profile) is so I don’t accidentally go to an event she’s attending.
So… this is good “advice” for my sake, because it makes me feel less guilty, less like I had been “leading her on” or “being mean” or something, but I also agree with the commenters who are like “block block block!” because I think she would have flipped out at me worse if I’d sent her this. LW, you can probably judge better than we can if the guy is in camp misguided-but-decent or camp escalation-risk. Play it safe.
Oy, I’m sorry that happened to you. This kind of thing is even harder with friends, because there isn’t really a socially acceptable way to tell them “no forever” like there is with dating. Romantic breakups are difficult but common and everyone knows that they are a possibility when you’re dating. It’s a wayyyy bigger deal to tell someone who is trying to be your friend, “sorry, no longer interested”.
Don’t send the link! This guy has a magic number. That’s the number of unanswered messages that will make him give up on you. Anytime you engage, even to tell him to leave you alone, the count re-sets to zero. Maybe his number is 500. Maybe it’s 49 and you’re almost there! Block him and DO NOT RESPOND IN ANY WAY.
RELATED BLOCKING TIP: Did you know you can block numbers right on your iPhone (should you have one)? I did NOT until recently and it is GREAT. Hit the little (i) next to the number, scroll to bottom, hit “Block This Caller”. See you in hell, so-called “charities” that aren’t covered under the Do Not Call Registry!
Just wanted to let anyone interested know that this is true with Android phones as well. Right on my phone I was able to block a spam number that somehow got my info. So helpful and it’s very easy to do. Just go into your call log, select the number you want to block, push the options button on the bottom of the phone and one of the options is block this number.
I feel like this would all apply a bit better if not for the fact that LW explicitly says she responded once early on to clearly end it. She didn’t *just* ghost – though even if she had, several months and dozens of messages is way too much. This advice reads more like it’s to someone who’s missed the hints for a few weeks of complete radio silence. If she were responding with possibly vague passes on individual proposed dates, ok, maybe the guy’s just a clueless nightmare. But LW said no. She said NO NO NO to the entire thing. That should have been more than enough.
If need be, you can also have your phone service provider block all callers who do not reveal their phone number. This usually works by giving the caller the chance to state their name as a recording if they have their number blocked. It worked very well for me when I had a relentless obscene phone caller a while back.
In my state the cops took a harassment report after I clearly told my creep ex to stop texting and he continued, as a predicate to stalking charges if he continued. Once I filed the police report he presumably found out about it and finally went away. So that may be an option depending on where you live: the officer just scrolled down past all the messages that came in after I told him to leave me alone and wrote it up. Understand that police involvement isn’t safe for everyone, but if it is and you feel comfortable, don’t hesitate. Dude didn’t get arrested, just got the message that I was serious about him going the fuck away by any means necessary.
I am so curious as to what the form and content of messages 9 – 48 would even be. “Dear Shelly, today I had my first Cuban sandwich and I liked it! I know I won’t get an response, but I just thought you’d want to know!”
In my personal experience of stalking (note: n = 1), it was increasing levels of guilt-tripping followed by increasing threats of violence.
I’m going to guess they were variations on “Are you ok? What’s wrong? If you’re not dead in a ditch, then WHYYYYYYYYY?”
[source: my only-slightly-successful-so-far ghosting experience, with a family member]
When it happened to me the messages were all variations on the following themes:
Why do you hate me, here is a forwarded email conversation between us from when you didn’t hate me, I can’t believe you hate me, why are you such a fucked up and terrible person, vague musing on revenge, I drove past your house (but I’m not a stalker).
This is terrible advice for the LW. Don’t… don’t give him any response. Be the black hole.
This link is not a response that will deescalate a social interaction. Use it only if you’re comfortable with the social interaction becoming very very intense.
Which is to say; do not use it with someone who will shout into the void 48 times. That will be a bad intensity.
Amplifying the signal for The Gift of Fear by Gavin DeBecker, for the Brave Correspondent, and others in similar situations.
This is not Misguided Dude. This is Obsessive and Harassing Dude.
Having been on the receiving end of this kind of garbage behaviour, which again, is not misguided but is stressful and sometimes scary, I second the advice to keep screenshots/messages and block on all platforms.
Sorry you are going through this, letter-writer. It really sucks.
Yes, this. A thousand times this.
Have basically been going through a non-romantic version of this for the past several weeks. Had an argument about boundaries for the nth time which boiled down to NO MEANS NO, NO RESPONSE DOES NOT MEAN YES, STOP COMING OVER ALL THE TIME AND EXPECTING ME TO MAKE EVERYTHING BETTER. Ended with him stomping off and saying that I’d have to call him instead of the other way around (I think he was trying to make me feel sorry but I was quite happy about it all!). So, you know, an argument, but not the end of the world, and I’m looking forward to finally having some time to myself.
And then. AND FUCKING THEN. 50+ text messages over the next couple days, so many phone calls that I eventually turned it off despite being in the middle of job hunting, a bunch of fb messages, him actually coming over to my house and pounding on the door (I’d locked it when I saw him coming), him cutting me off from the rest of our mutual gaming groups… All in a relentless cycle of apologizing, demanding I speak with him, blaming everything on his issues/depression/whatever, transparent attempts at manipulation, and repeat.
Being best friends with a narcissist is so much fun, guys.
The Bear, I am worried in case this is a real letter and your advice includes nothing for the LW on how to keep themself safe. LW should probwoby consider talking to the police or an organisation which supports people dealing with stalkers. 48 messages over several months isn’t “A little clueless”, it’s “well outside the norms of human interaction and who knows what else he thinks is appropriate.”
Someone who thinks that the forty-ninth message might be the trick might well be someone who thinks that kidnapping or buying a gun might be the trick. This is NOT charming misapprehension.