My brother's ex-girlfriend won't stop trying to connect with him and our family. What's the best course of action? They've been broken up for years and not only is he married to someone else, but so is she. The concern is I've always thought she was crazy and she is acting particularly crazy now.
Apologies for the wall of text but I want to give some clear details on the situation. Thanks in advance for reading...
So, my brother dated and lived with this girl who I'll call Jane. Jane seemed a little off to me, when I first met her, needy and self-centered, but normal enough. Slowly, her mental state declined. She became a ball anxiety, constantly yelled at my brother/became unnecessarily defensive about the tiniest things he said, she had some sort of OCD where she'd be in the bathroom for hours "getting ready" which forced her and my brother to constantly miss flights and appointments, etc. She seemed helpless and overwhelmed by the smallest things – my brother had to do everything for her and coach her through simple things, like packing. She couldn't hold down a job because she got so overwhelmed – she had a good office job that she got fired from for performance reasons and I don't think she's ever had a full-time job since. She also developed an eating disorder and the final straw in their relationship was that she lied to my brother repeatedly about getting treatment for it while she secretly continued to get worse.
That was five years ago. Since then, my brother has met someone else, who he married last year. Jane also married someone else – ironically, her wedding was the same day as my brother. But since then, Jane has constantly tried to make contact with my siblings and my parents. She claimed she wanted to hire a company my sister works for and asked for her help, but constantly tried to turn the text conversation to personal chit-chat. She saw my mom had surgery on Facebook and messaged my sister and my parents about it, and then tried to keep the conversations going. Then, she emailed my sister claiming she is writing a "book" and wanted permission to mention my brother, if my sister could pass along the message to him. She sent pictures of the handwritten pages of her "book" and it read like a diary – she's not a writer and it's not a book. After that weird email, my parents (finally) unfriended her on Facebook and we all blocked her on all social media channels. She noticed within hours and emailed my parents about it saying there was no need to unfriend her and asked if she could call to talk about it. My parents ignored her, but this leads me to believe she was checking my parents' Facebook pages on a daily basis – how else would she know so quickly? (What makes it even weirder is that for the past two years, I set my parents' "audience" for all posts to "Friends, except: Jane" so for all Jane knows, my parents hadn't posted anything new in two years. Weird, right?
We tried our best not to bring our brother into her efforts to connect with us, but then we recently found out she has been writing him letters this whole time, saying she misses him. In the letters she referenced talking to her current husband about my brother – yikes. My brother has ignored her.
Things stopped for a couple months, but just yesterday, my mom had a missed call from her. No voicemail. (The timing may be purely coincidental, but I happened to stumble upon her wedding video on Vimeo recently because I was curious and nosy about her and her husband, given that she has openly admitted she still loves my brother. After I watched her video, I noticed she had a "pro" account on Vimeo, which is weird – it's her only upload and she's not a videographer or content creator of any sort. I checked to see what "pro" accounts do and they offer analytics about who watches your videos and how they find them – she may have seen someone in my city watched the video. Given that my family is spread out in different cities outside of hers, I figure she knows it was me if she is checking the analytics. It only had like 30 views. I hope me watching that video didn't spur her on, but I truly believe the only reason she put that video online in the past month and got a "pro" account was in the hopes that my brother or someone might find it and watch it.)
Anyway, all of this is to say, what is the best course of action? For my part, I won't google her anymore or do anything she might be able to see. (She's never tried to actually contact me because I think she could tell I never liked her.) We obviously don't want anything to do with her and yet she keeps trying. It's like she's obsessed – it's veering into stalker territory. My brother said he is sticking to no-contact, ignoring her, and not rewarding her behavior. It sounds like he has dealt with a lot of attempts to contact him and he is afraid that responding, even if to tell her to leave us alone, might undo all that and reward her efforts. But what about the rest of the family? Should they also ignore or tell her to leave us alone? We've all blocked and ignored her, so our wishes are obvious to any sane person, but I'm not sure anyone has ever directly asked her to stop contacting us.
She lives in the same city as my brother, but it's a huge metropolitan city. I don't like that she knows where my brother works, although it's a huge company and a huge building. My parents, my siblings and I all live in different cities. She hasn't shown to be violent in any way, but I definitely don't think she is of sound mind. Her emails, to me, sound sort of panicked and stream of conscious. It obviously isn't normal behavior for her to constantly try to connect with us five years after my brother dumped her after we keep ignoring her. I don't want to freak out too much about this or be alarmist. It may be wishful thinking, but the ideal scenario is that she would stop. As upsetting as it is for us, I am sure it's far more upsetting for my brother and his wife, so I want them to be okay.
Thanks for any thoughts or insight. |
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