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Intimacy-Seeking Stalkers: When You Aren’t Allowed Privacy
Intimacy-seeking stalkers all follow similar patterns when stalking their victims.
13/08/2025
Ruth Silbermayr
Author
There is a common pattern in how intimacy stalkers violate the rights of their targets, and such stalkers can often be identified by exhibiting these specific behaviors. I have personally experienced nearly all of these violations at the hands of two intimacy stalkers who employed various methods to acquire private information about me without my consent.
If you are a blogger or otherwise visible online, it is important to be aware that stalking incidents are at an all-time high. We are seeing a very high number of stalkers, and tools like spyware have made it alarmingly easy for them to access their victim’s private lives. In many countries, stalkers receive more protection than their victims.
Removing a stalker from your life can be especially challenging when they suffer from additional mental health disorders such as schizophrenia or erotomania. Most intimacy-seeking stalkers tend to exhibit certain shared behavioral patterns:
1. Intrusion into Private Life
The right to privacy includes the freedom to decide who is allowed into one’s emotional and physical space. Intimacy stalkers disregard the victim’s boundaries and choices, effectively denying them the ability to live free from unwanted attention, harassment, unwanted contact, or sexual assault by a person the victim does not wish to engage with, either sexually or otherwise. This violation of autonomy often leads to feelings of powerlessness and loss of control over one’s life, which are common psychological consequences experienced by stalking victims. It is important to recognize that many intimacy-seeking stalkers also engage in sexual violence, as they lack the social skills and respect necessary for consensual relationships, and may resort to coercion, force, covert surveillance, violence, or death threats to obtain sex.
In addition, intimacy stalkers often seek access to the victim’s most private and intimate spheres—such as how they look naked or even details about bodily functions—which a typical person would find invasive and distressing. Paradoxically, these offenders may feign offense when the victim refuses to share such intimate information. Some stalkers may go as far as wanting to observe or even participate in the victim’s sexual activities with others. Many intimacy stalkers exhibit voyeuristic tendencies and lack the healthy personal boundaries that characterize typical social behavior.
2. Non-Consensual Gathering of Personal Information
Stalkers frequently collect personal details about their target’s relationships, daily routines, health, or intimate life without permission. Even questions or “inquiries” that seem harmless, when asked persistently and without consent, can constitute a violation of privacy because they undermine the individual’s control over their own information. Psychological studies emphasize that maintaining control over personal data is essential to a person’s sense of autonomy and security. Persistent, unwanted information gathering strips the victim of this control, causing significant stress and confusion.
Stalkers often collect this information not merely out of curiosity, but also to use it later as leverage—threatening to expose sensitive details publicly. Such threats may be employed to extort large sums of money or to silence the victim, preventing them from speaking out about the stalking and harassment they have endured. Unlike typical social interactions, where people share some personal information reciprocally, an intimacy-seeking stalker may never share anything about themselves but feels entitled to access all information concerning the victim.
When a victim refuses to provide such information, they may face death threats, derogatory name-calling, threats of sexual violence—including rape—or actual physical assault to instill fear and prevent them from speaking out. These stalkers typically do not rely on legal or consensual means to obtain information. If they initially attempt to acquire information through seemingly acceptable channels but encounter firm boundaries, they often escalate to coercion, threats, intimidation, and blackmail.
3. Unwanted Exposure of Private Facts
Sometimes, stalkers share, threaten to share, or fabricate intimate or embarrassing information to manipulate or coerce their victims. This constitutes a direct violation of the right to keep certain facts confidential. The threat or act of exposing such private information is a form of blackmail that can profoundly damage self-esteem and trust. Trauma experts note that victims often suffer prolonged psychological harm from the fear or reality of such exposure, as well as from potential retaliation by the stalker once the victim reveals the truth about them.
4. Erosion of Personal Autonomy
Intimacy-seeking stalkers actively work to undermine a victim’s ability to make independent choices and control their own life. They disregard the victim’s boundaries, manipulate situations, and coerce behavior, effectively stripping the individual of the freedom to decide who they interact with, where they go, or how they respond to unwanted attention. This deliberate interference often results in feelings of helplessness, powerlessness, and a profound loss of control over daily life—common psychological consequences for stalking victims.
These stalkers may escalate their efforts through coercion, intimidation, surveillance without the victim’s knowledge, or threats of violence and sexual assault. By systematically removing a victim’s capacity to act freely, they attempt to dominate the victim’s emotional, social, and physical autonomy.
They may use various methods to undermine your autonomy, often including gaslighting. For example, they may constantly suggest that you cannot act independently or perform everyday tasks—such as washing, cleaning, cooking, eating, or dressing—even if you are perfectly capable. They might criticize your performance, take over tasks to “show you how it’s done,” or interfere in ways that actively sabotage your efforts. Often, their own behavior demonstrates incompetence: smashing things, rushing tasks erratically, or claiming you are too slow when you are simply attentive to important details. They may talk incessantly or otherwise obstruct you while you try to complete tasks. If your life used to run smoothly before this person entered it, but now tasks that were once easy have become difficult because they constantly intrude and block you, this illustrates the dynamic clearly.
In more extreme cases, they may interfere with your work by hacking into your computer or network, altering code, or manipulating projects you are editing online—sometimes using spyware to monitor your activity. They may push themselves into your projects, insisting they have the right to control or contribute, even when this is unwanted. These behaviors often infantilize the victim and attempt to strip away autonomy.
I have personally experienced severe forms of this dynamic as a woman: being blocked from completing tasks, having accounts hacked, and projects altered without consent. These attacks were motivated by the stalker’s belief that I had no right to live autonomously or independently. Their interference created a hostile and controlling environment in which I was expected to hand over my work and possessions (because I am a woman) while they imposed their judgment—often incompetently—on everything I did and tried to destroy and steal everything from me. Their jealousy, arrogance, codependency, and entitlement were out of control, leaving me to face threats, intimidation, and the destruction of my work.
One person who harassed me every day with this kind of behavior is a famous singer, and I couldn’t care less about a person who constantly projects onto a woman that she is not the authority in her life simply because she was born a woman and he was born a man. He also constantly projected onto me that I needed to do everything at the time and in the way he wanted things to be done, even when this was not conducive to living a peaceful, fulfilling life in flow.
This blocking of my life, work, and projects occurred daily with every task I attempted. It has made my life unbearable, and the harassment is ongoing and extremely difficult to manage. It has taken both a mental and a physical toll.
Parental Alienation and Family Sabotage
In some cases, the stalker’s manipulative behavior extends to sabotaging the victim’s relationship with their children. This can involve spying on or stalking the victim over months or years to gather private information. Once the stalker is embedded in the family dynamic, they may alienate the victim from their children by spreading lies and fostering mistrust.
This kind of parental alienation is well-recognized by psychologists and family therapists as a serious form of emotional abuse. It can cause lasting damage to both the parent-child relationship and the mental health of all involved. The longer the alienation persists, the harder it becomes to repair the bond.
The Experience of Manipulation and Lies
Many stalkers deny their alienating or abusive actions when confronted. They often lie and claim their behavior was “for the victim’s own good.” When these denials fail, they escalate by attacking the victim’s character and launching smear campaigns to ruin their reputation. This coordinated emotional and social abuse can leave victims isolated and overwhelmed.
The psychological toll of this abuse is immense. Victims may face not only the loss of important relationships but also the erosion of their own sense of reality and self-worth.
For example, I have experienced a stalker who, after I moved back to Siping, began sabotaging my relationship with my children horrifically. Despite my requests to stop, he continued to disparage my children and attempt to control my parenting decisions, as though he had authority over my family life.
Emotional and Psychological Impact
The gaslighting, manipulation, and relentless stalking create an environment of fear and confusion. Victims often feel trapped, unable to remove the stalker from their lives. The emotional incestuous nature of some stalkers’ involvement—where boundaries are violated in an unhealthy way—endangers the mental well-being of both the victim and their children.
From a psychological perspective, these behaviors are not random but part of a systematic pattern of control and abuse. The stalker’s need to invade privacy, gather secret information, and manipulate relationships stems not from care or protection, but from a desire to dominate and exploit.
Warning Signs and Red Flags
Reflecting on my own childhood, I remember adults who wanted to spend excessive time with us. While such attention can sometimes be innocent, there are red flags that indicate when it is not.
For example:
- When a stranger or acquaintance discusses your children negatively behind their backs, hiding it from the children themselves, and refuses to stop when asked.
- When someone attempts to pull your children to their side or to the other parent’s side by covertly destroying relationships.
- When the person disregards your clearly communicated boundaries and continues manipulative behaviors without remorse.
I have had the stalker I wrote about on my blog in the past do all these things. When I talked about it, he became extremely childish and irresponsible (as if he ever took on any of his responsibilities). He also smeared my name at my workplace, to other people, and even to my face—portraying me as incompetent, unable to manage my life, and insisting that I should feel extremely inferior to him while accepting the false narrative he spread about me every day.
Conclusion
An intimacy stalker often uses deception, manipulation, and persistent intrusion to gain access to private information and relationships. They betray trust, sabotage family bonds, and violate the victim’s right to privacy and autonomy. Their behavior causes profound psychological harm not only to the victim but also to their children and wider social network.
A common sign I have personally observed among intimacy stalkers is their inability to understand the normal social hierarchies that protect individual boundaries—ensuring that parents act like parents, children act like children, and strangers remain strangers rather than suddenly becoming part of your family when they clearly are not. Often, an intimacy stalker will insert themselves into your relationships, including those between you and your children, behaving as if they truly belong to your family. This behavior is not only disturbing but also indicative of serious mental health issues. Such individuals can be dangerous, and it is crucial to remove them from your life by any means necessary to protect yourself and your family.
If you ever experience a “creepy” feeling around someone who initially seems normal but behaves in invasive or manipulative ways, trust your intuition. Many victims of intimacy stalking find it difficult to recognize these patterns early, but awareness can be the first step to protection.
Have you ever been harassed by an intimacy-seeking stalker?