The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals that Protect us from Violence (20 page)

The next day there was another message: “No need to call back, I just thought I’d let you know you are an asshole. I want that letter back!”

This was too much for Mike. He felt he had to take some real action now. It is at this point in these situations that a fascinating thing happens: The pursuer and the victim begin to actually have something in common: neither wants to let go. The pursuer is obsessed with getting a response and the victim becomes obsessed with making the harassment stop.

What the pursuer is really saying is “I will not allow you to ignore me.” He’ll push buttons until one provokes a reaction, and then as long as it works, he’ll keep pushing it. Guilt is usually first, then harassment, then insult. Each works for a while, and then doesn’t. When victims participate in this process, threats are not far behind.

But Mike wasn’t going to just sit around and do nothing. He called the person who had introduced them, told her the whole story, and asked for her help. “Maybe you can get through to him and get him to leave me alone.”

The next day Mike’s voice mail had three messages from Tommy, one of them left at two A.M.: “Now you’ve ruined one of my best friendships, asshole! I don’t know what lies you’re spreading about me, but I demand an apology, a written apology. You are on notice.”

Two days later, more messages, including one saying that Tommy was going to make a formal complaint, whatever that meant. Then a message saying, “I’m going to book twenty bogus trips with your agency every month. You won’t know what’s me and what isn’t. Then you’ll learn not to make promises you never intended to keep.”

Jackie convinced Mike to keep the voice mail messages but otherwise ignore them. The following week another message came in saying that if Mike would call and apologize, Tommy might accept that, “but we’re getting to the point that an apology won’t be good enough. I like Jackie, and I’m sorry for all the trouble your stubbornness is going to bring her.”

Mike and Jackie finally ended up in my office, playing the tapes of the voice mail messages. By this time, they had already been to the police twice. Officers had visited Tommy and warned him to stop, but he actually got worse after that. To understand the police inclination toward direct intervention, one must recognize that in all cultures of the world, the role of police is to control conduct. Police are the enforcement branch of our society, and when people misbehave, it is police we expect to make them stop. That’s usually fine, except in cases in which police contact actually encourages the very behavior it is meant to deter. When nothing else worked, the police told Mike to get a restraining order, but Jackie convinced him to wait until after they had discussed it with me.

Sitting on a couch in my office, Mike made it clear that he was near the end of his rope. He wanted me to “send some people over” to convince Tommy to cut it out (even though that hadn’t worked when their friend did it or when the police did it). He said he wanted me to “explain the facts of life to Tommy in no uncertain terms.”

I told Mike that all terms were uncertain to Tommy.

“But if he knows he can get into trouble,” Mike argued, “it’s logical for him to stop.”

“Tommy does not have a track record for being logical. He doesn’t speak the same language we do, and we can’t teach it to him with logic. If he were reasonable, he wouldn’t have pursued this behavior in the first place. There is no straight talk for crooked people.”

Mike argued more: “I don’t want this guy thinking he can get away with harassment.”

Jackie responded before I could: “If we can’t control what he does, we certainly can’t control what he thinks.”

I suggested, with Jackie’s quick agreement, that if Mike did not respond, Tommy would eventually turn his attention elsewhere. “That may take some time and some patience, and I know it isn’t easy, but efforts to change his mind or to change him are the opposite of what you want. You don’t want him improved—you want him removed. You want him out of your life. There is a rule we call “engage and enrage.” The more attachment you have—whether favorable or unfavorable—the more this will escalate. You see, we know a secret, and that is that you are never going to work with him or be friends with him or want anything to do with him. Since anything less than that is not going to satisfy him, we already know that part of the outcome. He is going to be left disappointed and angry, and he is going to need to deal with that. If you talk to him, what you say becomes the issue. The only way you can have your desired outcome right now is to have no contact. Only then will he begin to find other solutions to his problems, which you can’t help with anyway. As long as he gets a response from you, he is distracted from his life. If, however, you don’t return the calls, then each time he leaves a message, he gets a message: that you can resist his pursuit.”

“Yeah, but the guy never stops.”

Jackie interjected: “You haven’t tested ‘never’ yet, Mike. You haven’t even tried two weeks.”

She was right. I explained that every time Mike called Tommy back or showed any detectable reaction to his harassment, this engaged him. “With each contact, you buy another six weeks.” I explained that the same concepts apply with romantic pursuers who don’t let go, ex-boyfriends who don’t let go, fired employees who don’t let go, and all the other incarnations of don’t-let-go. I wanted Mike to know that though Tommy was annoying, he wasn’t unique.

I asked Mike what he thought Tommy might do next.

“I have no idea. That’s why I came to you.”

I waited.

“I guess he’ll threaten some more.” (An exactly accurate prediction from someone who a moment before had “no idea.”)

Mike faced a type of situation that initially offers two widely different management plans: (1) change the pursuer, or (2) change the way the pursuer’s conduct affects us. Under the first heading are such things as warnings, counter-threats, police interventions, and other strategies designed to control someone’s conduct. Under the second heading are such things as insulating ourselves from hazard or annoyance, evaluating the likelihood of violence, and monitoring new communications. Under the second plan, we limit the impact the situation is allowed to have by limiting our fear and anxiety. We also limit impact on the pursuer by not responding.

In this case, we agreed that my office would conduct a general background inquiry on Tommy, evaluate all the messages and information available thus far, and institute the following management plan: Mike would get a new voice mail extension. My office would check Mike’s old voice mail every hour and forward to him all of his messages, except those from Tommy. We would review, evaluate, and keep each message left by Tommy. I assured Mike and Jackie: “Between where we are now and his becoming violent, there would be several detectable warning signs. If there is anything that gives us the slightest reason to believe he might escalate beyond phone calls, we will contact you immediately.”

What impact a harasser has is one of the few things a victim can control, and from that day forward, Tommy’s calls would have no impact whatsoever on Mike or Jackie.

In the end, Tommy continued to call for five more weeks. He left many messages, including threats that Mike would have found hard to resist responding to. Mike had predicted that Tommy would only stop if someone “made him stop,” but in fact, the opposite was true. He would only stop if nobody tried to make him stop.

This case could have been very different. Mike and Jackie might have gotten a restraining order, which is really the process of suing someone in civil court to leave you alone and stay away from you. Would Tommy have advanced or retreated? Who had more to lose: Tommy, or Mike and Jackie? Had Tommy reacted favorably the other times Mike tried to put a cost on his conduct (enlisting Tommy’s friend, sending the police)? What would a lawsuit have done to Tommy’s perceived justification?

People in these very frequent situations, whether involving a former intimate partner, a former employee, or someone like Tommy, wrestle with their options, rarely seeing that doing nothing provocative is an option too. Everyone they know has a suggestion: “He’ll stop if you just return his call; all he wants is to be recognized;” “Maybe you need to have someone else call and say you’re out of town;” “try changing your number, he’ll get the message.” There is an almost irresistible urge to do something dramatic in response to threats and harassment, but often, appearing to do nothing is the best plan. Of course, that isn’t really doing nothing; it is a reasoned management plan and a communication to the pursuer every bit as clear as direct contact. This approach is a real test of patience and character for victims, but that is often the fastest way to end harassment.

The way a friend of mine describes his approach to work offers a valuable analogy for managing some interpersonal situations: “I have two drawers in my desk. One is for the things I must do something about, and the other is for the things time will take care of.” Time will take care of most people who refuse to let go.

Some of these persistent people suffer from delusions, the very definition of which explains why they don’t let go: a false belief that cannot be shaken even in the face of compelling contrary evidence. Most harassers, however, have something less than a delusion, something we might call an alternate perception or an unreasonable opinion. The resolution they seek is usually not attainable, and these people are so confounding because the original issue they cling to is seen from their unusual perspective. We may think Mike made no promises to Tommy, but Tommy can say he feels otherwise. He can even base his feelings on objective facts and statements that were actually made.

But it is the outcome he desires and his way of getting there that establish Tommy as an unreasonable person. Professor Mary Rowe of MIT is among the few academics who have studied these cases. She identifies as a warning sign the “extreme nature of a desire—for example, a desire for total physical and emotional control of another person, or total control of an office process, or the unwarranted firing of another person, or the total acceptance of a proposal.” She also describes an “extraordinary sense of entitlement, such as ‘She
must
talk with me!’… ‘The department
must
let me work on that project!’ or ‘I refuse to vacate my office.’”

When a person requires something unattainable, such as total submission to an unreasonable demand, it is time to stop negotiating, because it’s clear the person cannot be satisfied. Getting pulled into discussions about the original issue misses the point. It’s as if one party has come to the table wanting a million dollars and the other party is prepared to give five dollars, or no dollars. In such situations there is nothing to negotiate.

In some cases a person’s desired outcome can’t even be determined, much less attained. What would Tommy have been satisfied with near the end of his harassment campaign? An apology? A successful partnership with Mike? I don’t know, and I don’t think Tommy knew either.

Professor Rowe brings into focus the great internal conflict for such people, explaining that they “certainly do not want to lose, but may also be unable to stand winning, in the conventional way, since that would mean the fight is over.”

Of course, it isn’t over until all participants are out of the ring, and as long as people try to change the pursuer or satisfy the pursuer, it goes on. Most often, the fear of violence lurks in the shadows and keeps people trying, but was Tommy likely to be violent? Let’s look at him in terms of the four general elements of violence (JACA):

Tommy may have felt provoked when Mike called his friend, but he did not demonstrate that he felt violence was justified.

People likely to use violence perceive few or no alternatives, but Tommy’s continuing calls proved that he saw many alternatives (interfering with Mike’s business, harassing, threatening, etc.).

Those likely to be violent perceive that it will bring them tolerable or even favorable consequences. Tommy showed no indication that he was willing to give up his freedom (an intolerable consequence to him) by escalating to violence. Interestingly, the consequences of threatening (including being visited by police) were clearly tolerable to him.

Those who use violence perceive that they have the ability to deliver it, but Tommy said nothing and did nothing that indicated he felt that ability.

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Though victims understandably find them confounding, most people who refuse to let go are highly predictable. It is perhaps too glib to say they continue until they stop, but that is basically what happens in the vast majority of cases—unless they are engaged. To accurately predict the little behaviors along the way, one must understand the languages of entitlement, attachment, and rejection. Above all, one must see the situation in the context of this culture, which teaches the myth that persistence pays. The earliest version most of us hear is “In America anyone can be President,” when in fact only one person can be president, and 240 million others cannot. F. Scott Fitzgerald said something about persistence that all the Tommys could benefit from: “Vitality shows not only in the ability to persist, but in the ability to start over.”