Crushes on pop stars and schoolteachers are one thing, but when does a harmless fixation turn into a dangerous fantasy? When the obsessed one is an adult who has lost his or her grip on reality.
When you are very attracted to someone it is only natural to spend a lot of time thinking about them and conjuring up their image in your mind. You want to see them, talk to them, even smell them. Somehow you want them to surround you like a cloud. In a sense, you are obsessed.
But when does obsession become unhealthy, even criminal? When is that fine line crossed between the desire to be with your loved one and the mission to take over their life completely, perhaps to stalk their every move?
Celebrities
Many celebrities have discovered to their cost what it means to be the object of someone’s obsession. Tennis superstar Steffi Graf was stalked by what the newspapers called a ‘crazed fan’, German Kay Kurt Zum Felde, for a period of years. Police were called to evict him from the Graf property in Germany seven times. A local policeman said: ‘From time to time we get the odd loony who pesters but there’s nobody who keeps coming back like this man.’
At first it might seem almost endearing, just another no-hoper who has set his sights on someone impossibly rich and famous. In 1993 Zum Felde spent a day watching Steffi play at Wimbledon, one minute shouting abuse at her, the next telling the newspapers that he had written her a 27-page love-letter. A member of her entourage said: ‘He seemed to be in a mentally confused state. One minute he was blaming her for all the troubles in the world and the next he said that he loved her.’
Stress
Other celebrities have had to put up with several such ‘fans’ who bombarded them with letters and threatened to break into their homes. It is very stressful and menacing. At the back of your mind there must be the worry that although these people seem harmless enough, they could be unstable. If something snapped in their minds, what might they do next?
What drives someone to go to such lengths? Certainly some of these people have suffered from a recognised mental illness like schizophrenia, but many of them are perfectly ‘normal’ apart from this one hang-up, this obsession with one particular person.
Famous people are prime targets because their schedule is well known and you can almost always get to see them, if only from a crowd. Their photographs are regularly in the newspapers and they get on television a lot. In the case of Selina Scott, her ‘number one fan’ never missed her programmes, even when she was on every day. All this exposure serves to inflame the stalker even more, and his whole life becomes a strategy for seeing and speaking to his beloved.
Sexual fixation
What lies behind this sort of fixation is a complicated mixture of things, but one of the main reasons for this extraordinary sort of lust is the very inaccessibility of the object of their desire. Yes, he may get to see them a lot, but he can never hope to do more than brush against them as they are rushed through the throng to their limousine. Never in a million years would he ever get to have a drink with them, let alone sleep with or marry them. To be so near yet so far often whips the stalker into a frenzy.
It may begin as a sort of romantic ideal – just like the knights of old and their ‘courtly love’ for a married lady. They contented themselves with writing love songs which the troubadours sang, and sighed over their hopeless love from a safe distance. But today’s stalker, having chosen a hopeless ‘love’, then starts to get fed up with her apparent lack of interest in him and wants more.
He thinks that if he can go to all the trouble of writing and faxing letters every day, of sending bouquets of flowers and going to her every concert/match or whatever, then surely she can at least meet him and show her appreciation. It all starts to go sour very quickly, when it becomes obvious that his devotion is in vain. And soon his love gets tinged with hostility and his fantasies are all about forcing her to listen, to give in to his will… and they gradually turn into the desire of violence, rape and kidnapping.
Occasionally, he may turn his frustration on her rivals, as one fan of Steffi Graf’s did when he stabbed Monica Seles. Sometimes he may even turn it back on himself.
Low self-esteem
People who are the obsessive type tend to have very low self-esteem. Deep down they feel unloved and unattractive, and often have a history of failed relationships or no close relationships at all. Real-life intimacy scares them, so they unconsciously pick a focus for their attention who will never put their devotion to the test, who will never see how inadequate they are, both socially and sexually. In a way, when these men turn on the object of their passion with hostility, they are really turning on themselves out of their own passionate self-loathing.
Of course women can be just as obsessive, but they tend not to have such high-profile ‘affairs’. Celibate Catholic priests are prime targets because they present a challenge while at the same time being completely out of the frame as far as the woman is concerned. If a priest did succumb to her temptation, she would probably go off him rapidly!
Pestering
Another major group of men who are adored and pestered from a distance are married men, usually professional and well-off pillars of the community. The female obsessive bombards him with letters and presents complete with provocative notes (knowing that his wife will see them), hangs around his place of work and/or his home. Some will even take to phoning him and then putting the phone down.
Sally, 24, was obsessed with Bob, a local barrister and family man. She pretended to be his secretary and successfully persuaded the postman to give her his mail. She steamed it open and read it all, then sealed it back up and put it all through his letterbox, two days late. ‘I just wanted to be part of him’ she said. ‘I know reading his mail was illegal but it was a real turn-on. It felt as if I was doing something very intimate connected with him. Just knowing that he would be touching the same piece of paper that I’d touched made shivers run up and down my spine.’
All she succeeded in doing, however, was getting the postman sacked and, when she was found hanging about Bob’s house once more, being questioned by a policeman who had been called by Bob. Sally didn’t enjoy the experience. ‘I managed to lie my way through it somehow,’ says Sally. ‘But inside I was really shaking. I knew Bob was staring at me through the window and I could feel his hostility from where I stood. It was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. At home I cried and cried. I’ve never been near him again.’
Marianne, 32, had been obsessed with the chairman of the company where she worked for ten years. They had met just once, for a brief conversation at an office party five years before, yet on the day he announced he was going to get married she trashed his office, smashed the furniture, ripped up all his important papers and even dropped his computer disks into the toilet. She was sacked and it was only the intervention of a psychiatrist that prevented her from being charged with criminal damage. ‘I’d given him everything and he betrayed me,’ she said.
On a pedestal
Any fixation on someone you know you are unlikely ever to meet is a waste of time and energy, as is keeping a passion going for someone who is already committed to someone else. In many cases it is possible to ‘snap out of it’, put it down to experience and move on to better things. It may well make you realise that you are worth just as much as, if not more than, this person who you placed on a pedestal. If, however, you find you are unable to cope with everyday life because of your obsession, then you owe it to yourself to find some help. Your doctor will be able to refer you to a qualified counsellor or other trained therapist to deal with the problem.
It is only when you have put your obsession firmly behind you that you will be able to go on to develop into a mature person and find the loving, fulfilling relationship that you know you deserve.