To ignore her?

[AwayInLalaLand]

I received a series of Facebook message recently from a woman I don't know at all and have no mutual friends with. Apparently, in 2011, I went on four dates with her current boyfriend.

Her messages are very long and she asks a series of personal questions including did he get you pregnant? Did you have an abortion? She asks because "he can't remember". I didn't respond and she's been messaging since calling me unfair for not answering.

I never slept with him.

She is saying it's upsetting him not knowing if he has a child and I owe him an explanation. Funnily enough he has messaged me or attempted to contact me in anyway. She has given me her mobile number and is demanding I call her.

Am I being unreasonable ignoring her and just blocking her or should I respond and fix his memory? I just feel that six years later it's ridiculous to message me out of the blue about impossibilities.

She does sound slightly unhinged but you don’t know what her boyfriend has told her. I think you could unintentionally be escalating the situation by blocking her, as others have suggested too. A short and to the point message would be much better than blocking.

Just don't engage, keep her blocked. Anything you say will provoke more questions and she probably will not believe you.

Anything you say will provoke more questions and she probably will not believe you

How do you know that?

She is clearly unhinged, but personally I would have responded with ONE message, telling her the facts that you have shared with us, that you will now be blocking her, and you do not want her to ever contact you again. Also, I would document everything just in case she remains a problem, and if so, I would go to the police and file a report.

Just be careful. Do not delete any messages. Keep a record. I say this because stalking over the internet can be very serious.

My husband dated a girl 15 years ago for a few months. Nothing serious. They parted ways when she went off to Uni. She had lived almost 2 hours away so they'd only seen each over a few times. It was a teen thing.

14 years later she tracks him down via FB. Fine. He's happily married with 3 kids and we'd been together for 13 years. She started off with polite catch up chit chat. However, it escalated very quickly to her magically having intimate knowledge about me and how our children weren't really his. She went into huge rants about how DD1 was one I purposely trapped him with and how the others were in fact fathered by a man in XXX town (my hometown listed in my FB profile that I hadn't been back to in forever) Her ramblings were clearly using information she gleaned from our facebooks and was complete nonsense. There can be no question of our kid's parentage. (Clones of DH who even inherited his birthmarks 😂)

He politely told her to stop contacting him as he didn't believe a word she was saying. So then she told him how he was a bastard for leaving her and their child. A daughter who had his mother's name (she had presumably been through his family listed on FB) She even sent pics. She messaged and messaged and DH ignored and ignored.
Eventually DH needed to make sure that there definitely wasn't a child so I tracked down her parent's number using info from her fB/electoral roll and the phone book. DH rang them. They were nice. Turns out there was definitely no kid and she had done something similar before. They begged DH not to tell the police. DH agreed and blocked her. So she made new accounts and harassed us both, still insisting the child was real and how DH had warrants out for his arrest for non payment of child support. Then someone phoned DH's work saying they were the police and DH should be sacked as they were going to arrest him (work laughed about it) and then our eldest's FB account received messages saying how her daddy wasn't her real daddy and that her mummy was a big fat liar. The FB only existed for candy crush lives and DD(10) had no access to it at all and the friends list was just DH, myself and DD's grandparents who played Candy Crush. DD never saw it.
I made DH go to the police now. I had no idea how far this woman would go and she had more than enough info to be able to find our home in our tiny little village.

She is being sentenced in November for the charge of stalking.

@internetCrazies, Christ on a fucking bike, I hope they lock her up forever. What a lunatic.

I would have replied along the lines of ‘No, and don’t contact me again.’ Hopefully that would have put an end to it.

I would reply:-

Sorry I think you have your wires crossed, it was not a relationship but four dates. I find your messages upsetting and will now be blocking you. Do not attempt to contact me again otherwise I will be contacting the police.

And block.

It's been almost 2 years now since it went quiet (Lady justice drags her feet) we're still slightly on edge. Although we don't know if she would even come to our village, all she would have to do is ask any person in the street/local shops where Mr and Mrs InternetCrazies lives and the lovely, friendly villagers would show her our door.
Because of her, social services knows who my children are (they had to offer us support) and the local school dis tighten up their security rules (coincidence possibly?)
Now with sentencing coming up soon, an unknown person has reported us to the LL for subletting (which is ridiculous as we live here with no room for more!) and the LL was suitably embarrassed and apologetic at coming out but still, we're constantly questioning every little thing that happens.
Our stalker likely has MH issues. Fine. But that doesn't get her a pass. I don't know what extents her issues will go to.

Whilst it's extremely unlikely anything will come of this woman messaging you OP, don't engage but do be careful.

Honestly? I get why your blocked her but I feel a bit sorry for her. It seems like her partner has been messing with her head a lot which is why she's contacted you (and possibly others).

I think I would have sent one message first saying you've never had sex with him and therefore obviously never got pregnant by him before blocking her but it's done now.

Wow, InternetCrazies that certainly in bonkers.

However, in that circumstance, what you did was not dissimilar to what this woman is doing - just messaging to check the veracity of something she has been told...

She's just clearly more upset and has reason to believe the person who is telling her.

I don't agree with answering her back. She's not just asking you a question and leaving it, she's harassing you and being completely inappropriate. You don't owe her a thing, block and move on.

I’m another who can’t see why you wouldn’t send a short reply and then block, it would have taken less time than starting a thread on MN about it. Typical “Nah, fuck her, not your problem” attitude from so many posters.

Yes I'd message back too.
I understand why you haven't. So if you don't want to unblock her now then fair enough. But if you get sent another message if she creates another account then I'd reply.

She sounds a bit unhinged and quite honestly responding to her will simply be feeding that

I'm another who thinks ignore

I think ywbu to ignore the first message. It wouldn’t have taken much to reply ‘sorry, we only had 4 dates and never slept together’. I wonder if you’ve had so many messages because she will be able to see you have read them and are ignoring them. It looks increasingly like you do have something to hide.

Send the brief message and then block once you can see she has read it. Obviously if the situation escalates then you will need to take the advice on reporting. But right now, is it really going to be detrimental to you to send a short message to hopefully put another woman’s mind at ease?

Block. No need to engage. You owe her nothing. If she's having problems in her relationship it's for them to sort out, not seek validation of facts or proof of lies from unrelated parties.

I'm another one who think YABU - you should put the poor woman out of her misery with a quick sentence denying the existence of any children.

I suspect the guy's been up to no good, she's at her wits end and is desperatly trying to find out how far his betrayal went.

Why not just give her a tiny sliver of peace of mind? You don't owe her anything, but put yourself in the shoes I just described above. Bet you'd appreciate a quick response then.
It's a bit uncaring to just block. Of course if it persists, you can report her.

I'd probably just block her then message the ex telling him to put her back in her box then leave it at that

Why didn’t you message her? She now thinks you’ve blocked her because it’s true. Duh!
Unless you want her to think that?
Unblock, quick message, block. It’s the right thing to do.

It's a tough one and I see both sides. Normally advice would be to leave alone this sort of message as any sort of interaction would just encourage more messages. But I hate seeing someone in distress.

Could you unblock her just to send a quick message. I think it's important to a) tell her she has nothing to worry about. She's barking up the wrong tree. And b) tell her to leave you alone and you do not appreciate being contacted. Then block again.

Isn't there some harassment law thing that the police can't help unless the person has actually told the harasser to stop and the contact is unwanted? (Not that I'm saying this is police territory. Just covering bases)

Internet crazies. I'm so sorry to hear this. Hope you're all well. I can imagine this has such a long lasting effect. Are the police offering any sort of support still? Take care.

I've only read the OP. I feel if a man is wondering whether he has a child six years after a liaison I think it is unkind not to tell him he hasn't. If you'd had a child by him and he wasn't paying I'm sure he'd be getting a kicking. Tell her you never slept with him so of course he doesn't have a child with you then block if that's what you want to do. Or message and tell him the same.

I would have sent her a message of explanation before blocking her tbh.

Just "we went on 4 dates in 2011 and never slept together" or whatever.