Affairs and stalking go together like peanut butter and jelly. With all the obsessive thinking that occurs with affairs, there’s also many rituals and checking on things.
The stalker may be the lover, the cheater or the betrayed spouse.
The person obsessing shifts from one party affected by the affair to another.
It’s as if the obsessing behavior spreads like a contagious disease. One form of checking or obsessing on things is ‘stalking’.
Stalking comes in many forms. There is physical stalking where the person actually watches and follows their target. The stalking may either be done directly or by surrogate, such as those using private investigators.
It’s not by accident that they are called ‘private eyes’ since much of their activities are those requiring watching and tracking.
The stalker also uses technology such as cameras, bugs, homing devices, cameras or keyloggers to track the activity of their target. In some cases, the stalker may want to capture the activity of the target with recordings or photos.
The stalker may also collect souvenirs of the target (e.g. collect personal clothing, mementos, etc. ) Besides observing where the target physically goes, stalkers may be tracking where you go on the internet, who you talk to and who you call.
Stalkers often want MORE. The stalker wants to have an intimate knowledge of their target. With them knowledge is power. The more they know about their target, the more power they have over them.
There are also stalkers who operate like skip-tracers. Skip-tracers are those persons who are skilled at finding where people live, who lives around them or financial information.
With many of the sites now available on the internet, amateurs can learn how to skip trace on their own. The stalker can investigate your past. The investigation may be limited to the target or it may include anyone who associated with you along with where you live and who your children are.
That brings up two more questions. Who are the stalkers and What is their reason for doing it?
Who are the stalkers? Any party in the affair triangle can at times be the stalker. It may be the lover, the cheater or the resolute spouse.
Any one of them or combination of them may find themselves in ‘stalker’ mode. When communication breaks down or is hidden, the risk of stalking increases.
There are many motives for stalking. If can be as benign as simply gathering information.
There are times that the stalker is looking for patterns so that they can either intervene or interrupt the patterned behaviors. At times the interruption escalates to the point of an ambush.
An ambush can occur as a confrontation or turn into an attack. The attacks are either direct or indirect, depending on the effect the stalker wants.
Direct attacks often get things out in the open quickly, whereas the indirect creates more fear and terror.
Speaking of stalking, marriages are damaged by stalking. The big way they are damaged is in terms of trust. The stalking displaced whatever trust once existed.
When the trust has been damaged by stalking or an affair, it needs repair. The problem is that most ‘experts’ don’t know enough about trust to give you concrete answers and solutions. In my video “How Can I Trust You Again?”, you’ll learn what trust is, along with concrete ways of rebuilding the damage in your marriage.
Best Regards,
Jeff
