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.

Definitely ignore. I feel sorry for her too, but I also very much doubt that anything you say will make a difference. Sending that many long messages in such a short time is really not a reasonable way to behave (and neither is quizzing your boyfriend’s exes about whether they had a child with him!)

I too would feel very uncomfortable messaging a stranger about who I have or haven’t slept with. I don’t see why you should have to engage with this at all.

If she finds some other way to get in contact I would send a firm ‘do not contact me again’ and I might consider contacting the man in question to make him aware of what’s been going on. For all we know he isn’t even her boyfriend!

would it really have hurt to put the womans mind at rest?

At rest about what, though? Why would anyone be worrying about this in the first place?

I can’t imagine any kind of scenario in which a reasonable person somehow takes it upon themselves to message women whom their partner dated years ago, to ask whether they had his baby.

Why are people so weird

I'm confused how you got the messages in the first place as to prevent so much spam, FB changed the way people who aren't your friends can contact you. They have to send a friend request first now according to their help screens?
I just went on to have a look at it as I check it from time to time to see how many Nigerian princes want to deposit a few million into my account.
Apparently they can't do this anymore unless I accept them as friend, but if you know how to access it, then let me know.

Shhhhhh what?

Men post on here all the time.
What does 'men deal with it more directly mean?'
Can you really not imagine a scenario where a jealous, abusive man was harassing a past boyfriend who found it difficult to deal with the messages?

Why would the man dump the woman? Controlling, unstable partners don't just think 'ah fuck it this is too much trouble' and move on.

If they did the relationship boards on MN would be empty.

@GinandGingerBeer Nope! No friend request - if you go to mess anger and message requests you can just add people to message - which is what she's seemingly done. I hope you find your Nigerian Prince

Surely this exbf will have assured this woman that he did not sleep with the OP and that they only had 4 dates.

OP, you owe this woman nothing. I doubt very much that she would believe you even if you had just messaged her and told her the truth of the matter. She clearly hasn't believed her bf. I think blocking is the only way to deal with this. Keep the messages just in case she finds another way to harass you.

@GinandGingerBeer This then comes to the message requests bit in your inbox and you can read it and open it etc without them knowing until you press accept then they can see you've seen it. You can respond after accepting. X

Ahh ok, thought you meant the within FB. No nigerian princes to be seen, back to work it is then. 😬

What did she message to you op? You say it was threatening?

i mean, there's asking for help and there's being abhsive. And not responding within a 24 hour frame doesn't warrant abuse.

Responding and telling her the truth wouldn't put this woman's mind at rest, for those of you saying op is unkind not to have done that. She sounds unwell. She's not going to think "oh righty ho, got that wrong" and leave op in peace. Ignoring and blocking is probably kinder than engaging.

No don’t reply - no matter what you reply with or how you phrase it, the person messaging you will not be satisfied. They will see something that you haven’t meant to say, they will read something into it, your refusal to further engage after your initial info will be “proof” that you’re not telling the truth etc. I’ve seen something similar happen -( not regarding a pregnancy) and I couldn’t believe how quickly the whole scenario escalated in the mind of the person that initially thought something was going on.

my first reaction would also be that 'just tell her nothing happened' but a PP is right that it becomes another matter entirely if you turn it around. I would be massively pissed off and would feel violated if someone emailed an old ex of mine and he happily told that person all the details about when we dated and whether or not we had sex.

Why the ex himself didn't contact you - he probably has no idea the girldfriend is stalking and harassing people he dated.

I'm relieved other people think she's insane too. Thank you!

How about we don't be epic twats and diagnose people remotely as mentally ill?

Sounds like some poor woman is being manipulated and lied to by some twat. You don't need to get involved, but why be a dick about it?

this is exactly the type of situation that the block option was created for! you poor thing, no one wants or needs that level of ridiculousness! she sounds slightly unhinged tbh. best left well alone and ignored!

Twatty, that is true. Whether this woman is mentally ill or being manipulated by her bf, none of this is the OP's fault and it is not for her to sort out.

It's not OP's problem of course, but one sentence would maybe stop this poor woman from having a meltdown and then block

I would say engaging would probably be of no use. As other PPs have said, if she is this unhinged (and we can assume this due to the fact that she's ranting repeatedly at length at some innocent stranger she doesn't know has even seen the messages yet) then it's likely that she wouldn't even believe you.

In our case, even the stalker's parents confirming she was lying and confronting her on our behalf didn't stop her. She insisted more strongly that she was telling the truth, even throwing in threats, insults and inventing new quite specific little details about the imaginary child.

That being said, unfortunately it may be wise to unblock her, tell her plainly and simply that as you never slept with the person in question, you do not wish to engage with her further and that she is not to contact you again.
This will be helpful if she does escalate. Courts don't take kindly to harassment.

It's not OP's problem of course, but one sentence would maybe stop this poor woman from having a meltdown

If she's unstable enough to send a series of rapidly escalating messages demanding very personal information from and threatening a complete stranger, then no, one sentence would probably not stop this poor woman from having a meltdown.

One sentence may indeed stop her, if it doesn't, you know you've been as fair as you can, given her the basic info that you don't have his child and don't want any more to do with it all, and then you block her if she continues. Not a big deal, surely?

You were right to block her
If you were going to reply, something general like 'you are barking up the wrong tree'
Everyone - check your FB privacy settings! Friends only for everything as a minimum, or friends except acquaintances if you accept friend requests from people who aren't friends in RL (and make them acquaintances obv)

Yes, but Honey, the op has already blocked her. If you unblock someone on FB you are not allowed to reblock them for 48 hours. Given the woman sent 14 messages in just a day, I'd not take the risk.

I also think you should have and still should put her mind at rest. It seems cruel to not even say, sorry, you must have thr wrong person, we were never intimate and only had four dates and leave it there. She’s clearly going to think thr worst now.

Yes, she might be unwell, or he might be goading her, whatever though, why feed it by ignoring her. I’d advocate helping her, simoly as a fellow human being. Just because he’s unwilling to. Doesn’t mean you should be also.

What risk are you taking though? The woman's sent you a load of messages anyway, so you're hardly going to escalate anything with a polite, brief reply. OP could have blocked her straight after that. I'm not saying she had to enter into a conversation with the woman, I just don't see the harm in being nice once before blocking..

And yes I know OP has blocked her, so it's too late, I just think it was pretty mean and slightly OTT to have not given her a tiny bit of info before blocking.

You are not responsible for her MH, nor her relationship. You don't know her and had she contacted you with some degree of manners, then yes, a reply would be 'kind', along the lines of 4 dates, no sex, no kids, no more contact.. but if she went from 0 - rude in 24 hours when the messaging system wouldn't tell her you have even read the messages, she's one to give a VERY wide berth to.

Leave her blocked.