What Does Crazy Sound Like? Psycho Ex-Girlfriend Stalks and Harasses Her Ex-Boyfriend Via Telephone

Last week, a Shrink4Men community member sent me a link to a site called  PsychoEx-Girlfriend.

Intrigued, I followed the link and hit the mother load. The site houses over 50 voicemails some woman left her ex-boyfriend after they broke up. These recordings have been kicking around the web since 2001, but this is the first time I’ve heard them.

“Mark,” the original poster of the voicemails, explains his now defunct site by stating:

There comes a time in most relationships that one of the two parties wants to end it – and about that time all hell breaks loose.  This is a great example of that hell breaking loose.

As the story goes, I dated this older woman for about 8 months. We were pretty serious but had some communication issues. Well, as you’ll see, she had no problem communicating her feelings. Its hard enough getting over someone.  When she leaves you in excess of 50 psychotic voicemails, it makes it even harder.  So, lets have some fun getting over her by starting a web site.  I hope you enjoy my personal pain as much as my friends have.

-Mark

Why post a series of crazy, simultaneously belligerent, desperate and pathetic voicemails that were recorded over a decade ago?

These recordings very clearly demonstrate:

1. How some unstable, high-conflict and/or abusive personality disordered women behave before, during and after a break-up or divorce.
2. The rapid cycle of abusive behaviors and tactics many of these women use to frighten, intimidate, guilt, blackmail and manipulate their exes back into a relationship with them.
3. The harassment and stalking behaviors some of these women engage in at the end of a relationship.
4. The need to maintain a strict policy of no contact. Re-initiating contact only prolongs the crazy and the abuse.

Let’s begin with the first voicemail. (*If you’re reading/listening to this at work, please turn down the volume or put on a headset. Psycho ex-girlfriend has a potty mouth):

Voicemail 1: 02/03/01 9:09pm. Ahh, the dulcet sounds of the jilted, angry, narcissisticly injured female. She claims she’s tired of chasing Mark while she continues to chase him. Furthermore, why is it when a woman says, “No. Leave me alone,” it means, “No. Leave me alone,” but when a man tells a woman, “No,” it’s often ignored, followed by intense harassment and/or he’s accused of being abusive for telling her, “No?”

Voicemail 2: 02/03/01 9:12pm. Mark is “torturing” her. Crazy is the one harassing Mark, but in this woman’s mind, he’s torturing her. These types, more often than not, get things backwards. This is a good example of how these women do not respect other people’s boundaries. She seems to understand that Mark not calling her back means he doesn’t want to be with her, but she doesn’t care what Mark wants.

She only cares about what she wants and is pitching rapid fire tantrums in an effort to get it. By the way, in case any women out there are wondering, overt displays of insanity typically don’t entice an ex who’s on the fence about reconciliation back into your arms. It usually has the opposite effect.

Voicemail 3: 02/03/01 9:15pm. This is a great example of how these women view their loved ones as possessions—even after the relationship is over. After a relationship ends, an ex can go anywhere he/she likes and it’s none of your business. This woman believes she can tell Mark where he can and can’t go even though they’re no longer together.

Note this woman’s idea of an apology; she apologizes and calls him names in the same breath. It’s also noteworthy how she threatens Mark and then tells him to never call her again when she’s irate about the fact that he’s already not calling her. Many of these women truly live in their own worlds that have nothing to do with objective reality.

Voicemail 4: 02/03/01 9:29pm. She’s tired of chasing Mark; yet she keeps chasing him. She equates being ignored with torture. “I am certainly moving on tomorrow morning.” Many these types threaten to “move on” or to never call or text again and then do so shortly thereafter.

Why do they threaten you with abandonment—especially after you’ve already ended the relationship? Because abandonment is one of their biggest fears and if they’re afraid of abandonment, it must be equally terrifying for you. However, if you actually want them to leave you alone, the threat of never contacting you again is usually a disappointingly empty one.

Voicemail 5: 02/07/01 8:39pm. She changes tactics here. Instead of, “You better call me back if you want to work on the relationship;” she’s demanding that Mark call her back for a technical obligation. He allegedly promised to help her set up her cell phone. This is ridiculous, of course. She could easily call customer service and have someone walk her through it, but it has to be Mark. “You promised me x, y, z” is a common ploy. Just substitute phone trouble for computer trouble, car trouble, plumbing trouble, moving, etc., etc. It’s just another attempt at forced contact.

Voicemail 6: 02/07/01 9:34pm. The desperate parasuicidal threat—a timeless classic. Demands and threats haven’t worked, so now it’s a tearful, “I’ll hurt myself if you don’t call me.” Make no mistake, this is still a threat and one of the sickest, most abusive things this kind of woman can do. If your ex threatens suicide, don’t call her back; call the police and let them assess if she needs to go to the ER. THIS IS NOT YOUR RESPONSIBILITY.

Voicemail 7: 02/07/01 9:40pm. 6 minutes later, no more tears and obviously not at the hospital. She’s “out of here“—until just 1 minute later . . .

Voicemail 8: 02/07/01 9:41pm. ”If you’re worried about me doing anything crazy. . .” like stalking you via telephone and making fake suicide threats . . . “I’m not going to.” Too late, lady. Notice the rapid fire succession of her voicemails. Even if Mark wanted to call her back, he wouldn’t have the time to listen to her message and dial before she calls again.

Voicemail 9: 02/07/01 9:53pm. ”You’re being mean . . . I hate you . . . You’ve tortured me.” If Mark is such a POS, why is she so desperate to be in a relationship with him? “It’s all conditional with you . . . Unless I’m the perfect girlfriend, you have a problem with it.” Looks like Mark knows that this kind of crazy is a deal-breaker. She doesn’t know why she’s wasting her breath on him, yet she just keeps going. Love the, “Take care” at the end of the message.

Voicemail 10: 02/07/01 9:57pm. ”Oh and by the way…” AT&T drops the call. Sometimes lousy cell phone service is a blessing.

Voicemail 11: 02/07/01 10:08pm. This voicemail is priceless. “I’m assuming that since you told me you don’t want to work things out that you don’t want to be with me anymore, but I need to know.” In the absence of any real contact, these women will continue the relationship in their minds without you.

The only accurate thing she says is that she “needs to make a change in my life big time . . . I’ve had a lot of patience in continuing to chase after you . . . so many times after you chase after someone, you can’t do it anymore . . . I guess you’re telling me you don’t want this anymore.” Ya think? “Man, what am I doing? Something is seriously wrong with me.” A rare moment of clarity, which then disappears very quickly.

Voicemail 12: 02/07/01 10:13pm. “I’m just going to keep leaving messages because you won’t return my calls. I need to know that you’re there for me and want to work things out. But since you’re not calling, I guess I need to assume you don’t want to work things out.” Her logic is convoluted at best.

She wants to be with Mark. Mark is a POS, but she wants to be with him. If there are any men out there who have any doubt whether or not this is crazy behavior, IT IS. It is diagnosable pathology. Protect yourselves. For me, this voicemail is where this woman’s craziness stops being darkly amusing and becomes incredibly sad.

Voicemail 13: 02/07/01 10:19pm and Voicemail 14: 02/07/01 10:23pm and Voicemail 15: 02/07/01 10:25pm. These messages are disturbing and a very good example of how quickly this kind of woman’s emotions and tactics can shift. She goes from the anger of being rejected and making demands to trying to sound rational and healthy (e.g., “I guess I need to take the hint and move on“) in the first 11 voicemails to sounding like an inconsolable little girl who needs her mother’s comfort (even though her mother is “sick and sleeping.”) When all else fails, they turn on the tears because they instinctively know most people can’t stand to hear someone else in this kind of emotional pain. Nevertheless, it is a ploy. The tears quickly turn back into rage if you turn a deaf ear to them. She’s desperately pushing buttons to get a response.

She appeals to Mark as a human being and wants him to take pity on her. This kind of woman doesn’t care what holds the relationship together. If she can’t get love; she’ll settle for fear, pity, obligation, shame or guilt. The cycle depicted in these voicemails is usually a predictable pattern that many abusive, unstable women cycle through: threaten, intimidate, insult, degrade, tears and please feel sorry for me, threaten, intimidate, insult, degrade, tears, please feel sorry for me, wash, rinse, repeat. “How can you be so cold? Please just be a friend to me.” She doesn’t seem to understand that most people don’t want to be a friend to someone who calls them names and harasses and stalks them.

Note that she trots out the “I’ve never acted like this with anyone else. YOU bring this out in me.” This is almost always a lie. Women who act this way have a long standing history of acting this way. She’s also blaming Mark for her crazy behavior, which is nonsense. We are all responsible for our own behavior. Others may hurt or upset us, but we choose how to react. It’s hard, guys, but don’t fall for the tears. These women will use any emotional ploy they can to suck you back into the crazy. It’s hard not to feel sorry for this woman. I feel sorry for this woman against my own better judgement. This woman does not need a boyfriend; she needs a dialectical behavior therapist.

Voicemail 16: 02/07/01 10:28pm and Voicemail 17: o2/07/01 10:39pm. And we’re back to tearful anger, proclamations of love, jealous accusations and demands. She also threatens to screw up her job and lose her apartment because he won’t call her and do what she wants, followed by more tears. This is just another threat to hurt herself if Mark doesn’t do what she wants. If she loses her job and apartment, it’s on her; not Mark. She’s rapid cycling now.

Voicemail 18: 02/07/01 10:42pm. More ultimatums and yet another goodbye. The tears are done and the impatience and burgeoning rage are back.

Voicemail 19: 02/07/01 10:46pm. Now Crazy resorts to the classic maneuver: Make ex-boyfriend jealous. Crazy informs Mark after a night of alternating tears, rage, statements of undying love and manic pleas for contact followed by more tears, demands, rage and begging, that she has a date with another man for the following evening, so there! She also tries to make Mark feel inadequate by telling him he needs to lose a few pounds. “Oh! and don’t try to call me tomorrow because Ill be out with another man, not like you’ve called me yet anyway, but just in case. . .”

This is just another version of the threat of abandonment. The message is: “If you don’t do what I want, I’ll go out with Dumb and Dumberer and you’ll lose me forever!” Please ignore any pang of jealousy you may experience. You’re not losing anything.

Voicemail 20: 02/07/01 10:50pm and Voicemail 21: 02/07/01 10:54pm. More demands; more threats. The rage is back. “You promised to show me how to use my cell phone!” She appears to be threatening Mark’s job now. Crazy ups the ante by employing yet another tactic: the smear campaign.

This is another common tactic of crazy, abusive women: Threaten to call your boss to get you fired. And really, who wouldn’t want  to be with someone who threatens your livelihood? It’s also Mark’s fault she “ hurt” herself “that night.” Although, she must not have hurt herself too seriously given she’s able to make harassing phone calls for the entire evening and she’s not done yet.

Voicemail 22: 02/07/01 10:56pm and Voicemail 23: 11:05pm. Full on rage is back. She calls Mark a POS, yet she loves him/hates him/wants him back and, by the way, “All my friends hate you!”

“All my friends hate you!” and “Everyone agrees with me! It’s your fault!” is just another tactic. It’s usually a form of false consensus building and shaming. She also accuses Mark of physically and emotionally abusing her. “You’ve hurt me more than anyone else ever has.” In reality, this woman is abusing, harassing and stalking Mark. This statement is also very telling: “Being ignored is probably the worst thing you can do to anybody.” Actually, it’s the worst thing you can do to a narcissist, borderline and/or histrionic.

Voicemail 24: 02/08/01 12:06am and Voicemail 25: 02/08/01 12:07am. More tears, threats and name-calling. Oh, and she wants her hat back—or is it her cat? I can’t tell because the audio pops from the saliva she’s spitting into her phone.

Voicemail 26: 02/08/01 12:12am. More vague threats of suicide. She continues to demand that Mark either return her hat or her cat.

Voicemail 27: 02/08/01 12:15am. More rage and tears and name-calling and obscenities followed up with an “If you don’t call me back tonight, we’re done. Goodbye.” Her voicemails are really becoming tedious at this point.

Voicemail 28: 02/08/01 12:25am and Voicemail 29: 02/08/01 12:33am. Crazy accuses Mark of “ruining” her night. Technically, Mark hasn’t done anything. Crazy has created a drama filled night all on her own in the vacuum of her imagination. That’s the thing. You don’t have to do anything. She also threatens to call the police over what now appears to be her cat. If I were Mark, I’d have paid $30 to a pet hotel, so Crazy could claim her cat there rather than give her a reason to come anywhere near my home.

Voicemail 30: 02/08/01 8:12am. ”I’m saw-wee. I didn’t meeeeeeean it. I’m sorry. I know how you feel and I’m sorry. I love you. Forgive me. I’m sorry.” After she finally wears herself out from the self-inflicted drama of the night before; she wakes up and apologizes and tries to sound reasonable. This is also part of the cycle. After a full-on rage out/suicidal threats/threats to call the police/threats to get you fired/tear-fill episodes of harassment and emotional blackmail; Crazy apologizes.

If you don’t forgive her or are too smart to even respond to the apology, you’re once again a cruel jerk and the cycle starts all over again. The reality is that you can’t forgive someone who’s not really sorry. These women say “I’m sorry” like a 3-year old says, “I’m sorry.” What they’re really sorry about is that they’re experiencing consequences for their bad behavior.

Voicemail 32: 02/16/01 8:57pm. For some reason, the original poster had to remove voicemail 31. I can only imagine that it had too much identifying information to edit out. The apologetic tone is gone and the rage is building again. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Voicemail 33: 02/16/01 8:59pm. She admits to deliberately trying to hurt Mark and once again threatens to go out on a date with another guy. Makes me think of the old one-liner, “Please, take my wife. No seriously, take my wife.”

Voicemail 34 :02/17/01 11:45am and voicemail 35: 02/17/01 11:47am. More accusations of theft and threats to call the cops. This is another ploy (especially if you haven’t stolen anything). The message is: “Do what I want and call me or I will get you into BIG trouble.”

Voicemail 36: 02/17/01 11:56am. “No need to call me back. All I have to say is there’d better not be anything else missing from my house, a$$hole.” It’s like an unending series of crazy brain farts.

Voicemail 37: 02/17/01 12:15pm. New tactic: Using a loss/tragedy that’s unrelated to you to elicit sympathy and contact from you, although, they’ll also use their own illnesses and losses or invent illnesses and losses to hook you. Crazy now insists Mark call her because she claims her father has prostate cancer. She’s appealing to Mark’s basic decency to get him to engage with her.

On the surface, Mark will look heartless if he doesn’t contact her knowing that her father is ill. On the other hand, what kind of sick twist uses the illness/death/accident/any misfortune of her father/mother/child/sibling/friend/dog/cat/parakeet to guilt an ex into talking to her? Shameless. She goes back and forth between demanding that Mark call and that he leave her alone. Which is it? When these women tell you not to call, it may be a way of mitigating the rejection when you don’t call.

Somewhere between February 17th and the 23rd, Mark appears to have made the critical mistake of re-establishing contact and a face-to-face meeting. There may have been some kind of reconciliation, but Mark’s ex quickly unravels again.

Voicemail 44: 02/23/01 11:36pm. She’s back to trying to sound like “the bigger person” and the brave martyr, wishing him a good life and goodbye. Notice the brave little soldier tremor in her voice.

Voicemail 45: 02/23/01 11:58pm. Here we go again. The belligerent rage is back. It also appears Mark may have begun dating another woman, which really sets Crazy off. What happened to wishing him well and saying goodbye just 22 minutes earlier?

Voicemail 46: 02/24/01 12:15am. “I wonder why I call you so many times? I guess I can’t handle rejection, but at the same time I wonder why I’m constantly putting up with rejection from you?” She confuses Mark asking her “What’s on your mind?” with an emotional commitment.

Voicemail 47: 02/24/01 12:20am. And she’s back, with a new ultimatum, more demands for items she claims Mark has and an offer for a “really nice gift” that she won’t give him if he doesn’t call her back.

Voicemail 48: 02/24/01 10:44am. Another calm, cool day of light apology with the excuse that she was drunk the night before when she left the crazy messages. This woman is what I call a “midnight feeder;” the crazy gets worse at night.

Voicemail 49: 02/24/01 6:55pm. “I will do anything to be with you . . . I’m too hard on you.” More begging and protestations of love and admitting that she’s wrong. Will her contrition last?

Voicemail 50: 02/25/01 7:53pm. Heck no! In the last few voicemails, she tries to assert her new and improved, independent, stronger self (i.e., a way to cope with the reality that she’s been rejected, “I don’t want anything to do with you!“). She  threatens to go out and “make friends” (Look out, Dallas!), so “I can have other things to do, which is what you say you want.” The very last voicemail concludes with more name-calling and more “I’m the more mature person than you, which is why I’m stalking you” nonsense.

Conclusion

If you’re in a similar situation, this is harassment. It’s stalking and it’s illegal.

Bottom line: When you break up with a woman like this, you can’t be nice, you can’t be friends and you can’t maintain contact. You have to be the adult, end it and make yourself impervious to her gyrating manipulations and to her unfounded accusations that portray you as the bad guy. You’re allowed to say, “No.” You’re allowed to end a relationship with someone who is abusive and crazy without being tortured and hunted down like an animal. What this woman did to Mark is a violation of his right to the peaceful enjoyment of his life.

From her voicemails, it appears that Mark made the classic mistake of trying to be nice to Crazy. Of course, he shouldn’t have been deliberately cruel, but just calling her to see if she was okay was all this woman needed to continue her campaign of harassment. If you give a person like Mark’s ex-girlfriend an inch, they’ll try to take your kidney, so don’t give them an “in.”

Shrink4Men Coaching and Consulting Services:

Dr Tara J. Palmatier provides confidential, fee-for-service, consultation/coaching services to help both men and women work through their relationship issues via telephone and/or Skype chat. Her practice combines practical advice, support, reality testing and goal-oriented outcomes. Please visit the Shrink4Men Services page for professional inquiries.

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