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Text messaging is often the fastest way to communicate with friends and acquaintances, but it’s not always the best one. Especially when it comes to texting with guys. Here at Crushable we aim to help you sift through all the subtext and emerge relatively unscathed – with a little help from our friend Amanda Ernst.
Social media sites and instant messaging programs make it easy for you to report unwanted and abusive messages and friend requests, but when someone texts you endlessly or inappropriately, there’s no quick fix. And that makes you feel harassed and powerless. Sometimes, the person texting you is more annoying than dangerous, and you can end the situation by asking him to stop or simply ignoring the messages. But what if they don’t stop? What if they get increasingly frequent or scary?
Not surprisingly, with the increasing popularity and common use of texting, its use by stalkers has been on the rise for years. It’s also become yet another weapon used to abuse and intimidate a girlfriend or boyfriend. And while your boyfriend constantly asking you where you’ve been and who you were with might set off alarms in your head, if he’s sending you 50 texts a day asking you the same thing, you might brush it off. Because, hey, 50 texts in one day is no biggie, right?
No, actually, it is a big deal, especially if those texts are harassing, insulting, or don’t stop when you ask them to. And I think I can safely say that all of use have had some run-in with inappropriate or excessive texts. The first step is recognizing when texts go from friendly to harassing. And, once you suspect that someone is using texts and other electronic communication methods to abuse or stalk you, then what? Here’s some steps you can take to stop the abuse and protect yourself:
• Ask them to stop – Sounds simple, but it’s your first step to ending an abusive relationship.
• Block them where you can – Make your feelings known by blocking your stalker’s access to you on Facebook, Foursquare, IM, wherever you can. And if he’s creating new accounts to see if you’ve blocked him, that’s further evidence of how crazy the whole situation has become.
• Stop responding – If you get 500 texts and you didn’t respond to any of them, it puts your stalker’s obsession in stark black and white. Also, when reporting a stalker to the cops, the fact that you responded to his advances downplays your own accusations, which isn’t good when you feel attacked.
• Don’t ever initiate contact – See above.
• Block texts from your phone – This drastic measure will stop all texts from coming in to your phone but might give you some much needed relief from endless texts, and maybe trick your stalker into thinking that you changed your number.
• Report it to the police – Due to the rising use of texts as an abusive tool, the police are starting to view aggressive texting as serious business.
• Change your number – We all know how annoying it is to change your number, but in extreme cases this might be your only option.
One last idea, if you don’t want to go as far as to report an ex-boyfriend or annoying texter: after ignoring his messages for a few weeks or months, finally text back, “Who is this? I just got this phone and I think you were trying to reach the person who had this number before.” It might work, but if it doesn’t, go to the top of my list and start there.
Have you ever had a text stalker? Or felt yourself being abused or harassed via text? Leave your stories in the comments below and you might see it featured in an upcoming installment of Textual Healing.
