The Dark Side of Relationship Pursuit

From Attraction to Obsession and Stalking

Brian H. Spitzberg, William R. Cupach

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781136651625
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Social Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Awards and Praise for the first edition:

• Recipient of the 2006 International Association for Relationship Research (IARR) Book Award

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"This text, as it presently stands, is THE go-to text for stalking researchers. That is my opinion and the opinion of multiple fellow scholars I know in the field. It rarely sits on my shelf, but rather is a constant reference on my desk. I can always count on these authors to have done an extensive review of literature. I thought I was thorough, but they are always providing me with new references."
--Dr. H. Colleen Sinclair, Associate Professor of Psychology, Mississippi State University

"Cupach and Spitzberg provide the reader with a multidisciplinary framework for understanding the nature and impact of unwanted relationship pursuits. This book is an excellent resource for students and professionals alike who seek to gain knowledge about unwanted relational pursuits and stalking."

— Journal of Couple & Relationship Therapy

The Dark Side of Relationship Pursuit provides historical and definitional frames for studying unwanted relationship pursuit, and considers the role of the media, law, and social science research in shaping today's conceptualizations of stalking. The volume integrates research from diverse contributing fields and disciplines, providing a thorough summary and assessment of current knowledge on stalking and obsessive pursuit.

Building on the foundation of the award-winning first edition, this revision considers assessment issues, offers an expanded analysis of the meta-analysis data set, and includes coverage of intercultural and international factors. As an increasing number of scholarly disciplines and professional fields study stalking and other forms of obsessive relationship pursuit, this book is a must-have resource for examining interpersonal conflict, social and personal relationships, domestic violence, unrequited love, divorce and relational dissolution, and harassment. It also has much to offer researchers, counselors, and professionals in psychology, counseling, criminal justice, sociology, psychiatry, forensic evaluation, threat assessment, and law enforcement.

1

The Evolution of Relationship Intimacy and Intrusion

We are supposed to pursue the things we love. It is something bred deeply into our consciousness, half memories of 5 million years of primate evolution and 5 millennia of interactions in communal endeavors creeping toward civilization. Both individual survival and the promulgation of progeny require coupling, communicating, and mating (Bugental, 2000). Love is more than a mere selfish symptom of nature, which Tennyson described as “red in tooth and claw.” Love is the dream as well as the drive, our saving state of grace and the shadow of our despair. In love is the seed of pursuit of such dreams, and the shadows in the nightmares that reflect on traumas past or what dreams may yet become.

Love has been socially constructed throughout history as an entity unto itself (e.g., Buss, 1994; Fisher, 1992; Kern, 1992). Many people across many cultures of the world still form their primary mateships and marriages based on parental prerogative rather than romantic rapture. The cultural concept of romantic love is itself a relatively contemporary construction, and has undergone considerable contemporary social revision (e.g., Bachen & Illouz, 1996; Ben-Ze’ev & Goussinsky, 2008; Dunn, 1999; Floyd, 1998; Giddens, 1992; Holland & Eisenhart, 1990; McAdams, 1988; Phillips, 2000; Radway, 1991; Roscoe, Kennedy, & Pope, 1987; Rothman, 1984; Waring, Tillman, Frelick, Russell, & Weisz, 1980). But what a concept it is. The manifestations of love display the mundane and the deviant, the beautiful and the bizarre, the affectionate and the aggressive. “Wherever there is the possibility for romantic interaction and attachment, there is also the possibility for obsessive attraction, and stalking tendencies” (Lee, 1998, p. 414). Indeed, “if there is a heart of darkness in the desire to bond with another, it is stalking” (Meloy, 1999b, p. 85). Such ironies of love have fascinated poets and scientists alike, and are very much the spine of the story of stalking and unwanted pursuit.

Pursuit is a goal-oriented activity. To pursue is to seek actively, to exert effort toward an object, outcome or destination. In its earliest uses (circa 1300–1600s), the term “pursue” meant “to follow (a person) with hostility or enmity; to seek to injure; to persecute; to harass, worry, torment” (Oxford English Dictionary, 1971). Its later meanings were more in line with contemporary usage, such as to follow or to proceed continuously toward one’s objective(s). Pursuit is often associated with desire, want, need, compulsion, or preference, of which the concepts of love and attraction are subsets. However, pursuit can be avoidant, in the sense the path of least resistance or the lesser of two evils may be pursued. Likewise, according to the online Oxford English Dictionary, the term “stalk” dates back to old to middle English, approximately to 1000 CE, and refers to “stealthy movement or following.” Were it not such a serious matter, the contemporary definition could be transitively altered to read: “the game of pursuit” rather than the “pursuit of game.”

Any journey into the dark side of relationship pursuit needs to chart a preliminary course, despite the scarcity of compass and maps. The journey begins with a consideration of the nature of disjunctive relationships. This is followed by a backward glance to see what textual traces have been left behind in the historical, literary, and dramatic accounts of stalking and unwanted pursuit. This retrospection meanders to the present day, and, thus, a need to define the basic terms that will serve as landmarks along the way to come. Finally, these definitions may or may not be shared by the public at large, and, thus, consideration is given to how stalking and stalking legislation are perceived by the public.

RELATIONSHIPS: CONJUNCTIVE AND DISJUNCTIVE

Historically, many of the theories of why people form relationships, attachments, mateships, and couplings with others have focused on the motivation of desire. Implicit in most such theories is the underlying assumption of mutuality. From theories of propinquity (e.g., Newcomb, 1956), to seeking balance (e.g., Pepitone, 1964), to investment and exchange reciprocity (e.g., Huston & Burgess, 1979), homophily (Montoya, Horton, & Kirchner, 2008; Rogers & Bhowmik, 1970), to similarity of interests, attitudes, personality, communication skills (e.g., Burleson & Denton, 1992; Sunnafrank, 1991), the general presumption is that romantic relationships emerge from shared mutuality or compatibility in the desire to develop the relationship. Even theories of conflict (e.g., Messman & Canary, 1998) and turbulence (e.g., Solomon & Theiss, 2011) tend to view such processes as disturbances in what should be the more ideal states of smooth trajectories toward mutual empathy, intimacy, and commitment. Most models of “ideal” relationships envision an ongoing dialogue in which common ground, common understanding, and mutual respect are pursued in ways that maintain the relationship over time (e.g., McNamee & Gergen, 1999). “Dialogical” relationships, relationships characterized by dialogue rather than monologue, are defined by the characteristics of coordination (or cooperation), coherence, reciprocity, and mutuality (Linell, 1998). Generally speaking, relationships are envisioned as interpersonal states pursued to the extent the participants in the relationship possess and establish similar understandings and seek similar interests, commitments, and futures, either explicitly in their own relationship, or in the larger collective of which their relationship is a functioning part (i.e., as in a family or organization).

Because of this interest in relationships of mutuality, there is a relative paucity of theory and research to account for non-mutual relationships. When individuals pursue mutual activities and states, their shared relationship may be considered conjunctive in structure. Conversely, when relationships are non-mutual, they may be considered disjunctive in structure. Stalking and unwanted pursuit represent disjunctive relationship structures (Cupach & Spitzberg, 1998, 2000; Spitzberg & Cupach, 2001a, 2002a). There are examples of such disjunctive forms of interaction and relationship (e.g., privacy invasion, intentional embarrassment, bullying, unwanted relationships, sexual harassment, sexual coercion, domestic violence, etc.), but few seem so prototypical of disjunction as stalking and obsessive relational intrusion. There is something fundamentally coercive in the disjunctive nature of stalking. “Stalking … is always a desperate endeavor to force a relationship on another party” (Kamir, 2001, p. 15). As such, “the process of stalking forces a relationship upon the victims whether they want it or not” (Babcock, 2000, p. 3). Furthermore, unlike many other disjunctive experiences such as coercion or harassment, stalking by definition endures across space and time, imposing interdependent outcomes on both the pursuer and the pursued, thereby constituting the key features of anything that might be considered a “relationship.” Stalking also overlaps with these other forms of disjunction. Fundamental notions of privacy, which include perceived rights to personal space, ownership of personal information, and social distance boundaries (Burgoon, 1982; Pedersen, 1999; Petronio, 1991, 1994) are disjunctively violated by stalking and unwanted pursuit.

Obsessive relational intrusion (ORI) is the repeated pursuit of intimacy with someone who does not want such attentions (see Cupach & Spitzberg, 1998; Cupach, Spitzberg, & Carson, 2000; Spitzberg, Nicastro, & Cousins, 1998). It is often referred to as unwanted relationship pursuit (URP), unwanted pursuit behavior (UPB), disengagement resistance, reconciliation persistence, post-relationship harassment, and so forth. Stalking, broadly defined, “is characterized by repeated attempts to impose unwanted communications and/or contacts on another in a manner which could be expected to cause distress and/or fear in any reasonable person” (Mullen, Pathé, & Purcell, 2009, p. 10). Both types of relationship, to be defined more extensively later, are the primary topics of analyses to follow.

What is a relationship? A relationship is any reciprocally contingent pattern of interaction over time (Rogers, 1998). The closer the relationship, the greater is the interdependence or contingency of the interaction over time (Kelley et al., 1983). Although various affective and cognitive features are often associated with “closeness” of relationships, these are not necessary defining characteristics. Relationships exist in the behavioral contingency of participants’ actions; all else is the décor of the relationship, rather than the structure upon which such decoration is hung.

By any number of standards, stalking and unwanted pursuit generally meet the criteria of a close relationship (Spitzberg & Cupach, 2002a). First, a majority of stalking and ORI relationships emerge from the vestiges of a previous relationship. That is, unwanted pursuit is often an extension or transformation of an existing relationship, and relationships that live in our memories are often very real in their manifestations (Harvey, Flanary, & Morgan, 1986). Second, stalking and ORI commonly last for an extended time period, often for years (Thompson & Dennison, 2008). The process of pursuit often becomes pursuers’ raison d’être for a broad range of their daily activities (Davis & Chipman, 2001). As part of this process, stalking and ORI tend to take place in a diversity of contexts, employing a diversity of types of contact and interaction (Holt & Bossler, 2009; Mustaine & Tewksbury, 1999). Third, consequently, stalking and ORI often involve frequent interaction, or pursuer action and object reaction (Dutton & Winstead, 2011). Indeed, stalkers and unwanted pursuers may call, write, and make contact far more frequently than people in a typical dating relationship. Finally, research shows the objects of pursuit are strongly affected by the process of that pursuit (Basile, Arias, Desai, & Thompson, 2004; Logan, Shannon, Cole, & Swanberg, 2007); their quality of life and patterns of action are often significantly disrupted. Thus, stalking and ORI typically involve two or more people interacting over an extended period of time, using a wide variety of forms of symbolic interaction across a variety of contexts, in ways that significantly affect their lives. Many people cannot make these claims of their typical valued and mutual relationships, much less their average friend on Facebook. Despite its disjunctive structure, stalking represents a relationship, and unfortunately, often a close relationship.

THE STORY OF STALKING

The roots of the concept of stalking run deep throughout history. Kamir (2001) traces the pattern of consuming surveillance and (usually sexual) threat of others to the myth of Lilit in 1000 BCE Mesopotamia. Dan and Kornreich (2000) trace stalking themes to the Hebrew myth of Joseph and Zuleika in Genesis. They further claim the “archetype of stalking has many derivations in Jewish, Arabic, Syriac, Persian, Indian and medieval European lore” (p. 282). Specific literary descriptions of stalking have been interpreted in Ovid’s Art of Love (1 BCE; Lee, 1998, p. 389), Lamb’s Glenarvon (1816), Shelley’s Frankenstein: or The Modern Prometheus, Varney’s serialized vampire stories (Kamir, 2001, p. 99), Louisa May Alcott’s A Long Fatal Love Chase (1866; Meloy, 1997a, p. 177), Dante and Petrarch’s descriptions of their own actual pursuit of women (Mullen, Pathé, & Purcell, 2000c, p. 9), and Shakespeare’s sonnets (Skoler, 1998; Smith, 2009). For example, in bemoaning the effects that lust can have on a person, Shakespeare identifies many of the themes common in the stalking literature:

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame

Is lust in action; and till action, lust

Is perjur’d, murderous, bloody, full of blame,

Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;

Enjoy’d no sooner, but despised straight;

Past reason hunted; and no sooner had,

Past reason hated, as a swallow’d bait,

On purpose laid to make the taker mad;

Mad in pursuit and in possession so;

Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;

A bliss in proof,—and prov’d, a very woe;

Before, a joy propos’d; behind, a dream.

Shakespeare (1991, p. 56), Sonnet CXXIX

As late as 1985, even an adolescents’ book entitled The Stalker (Nixon, 1985, p. 73) was published in which the antagonist voices to himself: “Careful, careful, little girl. I’m keeping track of you.” Many of the classic literary and narrative representations of stalking

conform to one or more of the following structures: (1) a strong, sexually initiating, dangerous Lilit woman stalks a man, threatening him and his family; (2) a “Jack the Ripper”/serial-killer “shadow” male character stalks a sexual, evil woman because she “asked for it,” “had it coming,” and ”brought it on herself”; or (3) a monstrous male stalks a weak, domestic, Eve-woman, who is saved only if she is revealed to be a Virgin Mary character.

(Kamir, 2001, p. 17)

In addition to literary tradition, van der Aa (2010) posits that the earliest references to what the law “would nowadays call stalking can be found in the Institutes of Justinian of 535 AD” (p. 30), which roughly translates legally to indicate that “being a nuisance by following a married woman or a boy or girl can lead to prosecution” (Royakkers, 2000, p. 1). Finch (2001, p. 30) traces exemplars of stalking-type activities in British case law as far back as Dennis v Lane (1704), and R v Dunn (1840). Apparently, the notion of unwanted pursuit dates as far back in antiquity as oral traditions and written history record. However, this theme apparently never received its own distinctive and generalized name until very recent times. This leads to the question of the more recent history through which society would import a term for other purposes to the phenomenon currently recognized as stalking.

The media are a widely acknowledged influence on the naming of stalking. The online Oxford English Dictionary traces some of the later meanings of the word “stalking” to the activity of hunting game (circa 1500s). This theme of hunting game was a relatively natural generalization to the narratives of hunting people. “The obsessive pursuit of another is a standard theme in American popular culture; many movies, novels, and popular songs center around obsessive love” (Lowney & Best, 1995, p. 50). The craft of filmmaking and the film industry clearly found the theme of fear-inducing and unwanted pursuit a popular narrative structure. Kamir (2001) identifies stalking themes in an extensive list of films, from The Student of Prague (1913), The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919), The Golem (circa 1920), Pandora’s Box (1928), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), Dracula (1931), The Mummy (1932), to several of Hitchcock’s films such as The Lodger (1926), Rebecca (1940), Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Rear Window (1954), and To Catch a Thief (1955). In 1971 Play Misty for Me constructed the contemporary stereotypical motif for the crazed celebrity stalker, and in 1979, a made-for-TV movie was aired called the Night Stalker that preyed on the vampire motif (Kamir, 2001). Later films would make the stalking motif more explicit, including Taxi Driver and Fatal Attraction (Kamir, 2001), as well as subsequent films such as Copycat, Pacific Heights, Unlawful Entry, The Fan, The Seduction, Stalked, and Stalker (Finch, 2001). Research indicates that the themes of movies with strong narrative elements of stalking parallel many of the actual demographics and characteristics of the crime (Schultz, Moore, & Spitzberg, in press).

That the cultural vernacular permitted the contemporary naming of stalking at this time is not surprising. In 1975, a rapist self-attributed the label: “It became an exciting thing to do, not just the act itself, but the stalking, the creeping, the buildup” (Footlick, Howard, Camper, Sciolino, & Smith, 1975, p. 70). As Kamir (2001) has traced, news reports had begun to refer to the serial killer Son of Sam in 1976 as having “stalked” his victims, and independently referred to a celebrity photographer as “stalking” Jackie Kennedy for photographs. Thus, by 1985, all the pieces were in place for a serial killer in Los Angeles to be dubbed “the night stalker.” “Following Son of Sam, stalker and stalking quickly became common terms in newspaper reports of serial killing, rapes, and celebrity assassinations. The perpetrators of these acts were now labeled stalkers” (Kamir, 2001, p. 148). In Rebocho and Gonçalves’ (2012) study of rapists and child molesters, three types emerged: raptors, who attack their prey immediately upon initial encounter; ambushers, who forcefully restrain their victims and secure them in a safe environment for further abuse or control; and stalkers, who “follow and watch their targets, moving into the victim’s activity space, and wait for an opportune moment to strike” (p. 2772).

The media can play a very active role in the social construction of crimes (e.g., Brownstein, 1996; De Fazio, Merafina, & Sgarbi, 2009; Kappeler, Blumberg, & Potter, 1996; Lipschultz & Hilt, 2002; Meyers, 1997; Schultz et al., in press; Spitzberg & Cadiz, 2002; Surrette, 1998; Voumvakis & Ericson, 1984). In general,

the news media present a carefully selected microcosm of the cases available which emphasise the sensational aspects of the stories. Stalking cases that are bizarre, extreme, dramatic or involve celebrities are presented to the public with little or no indication that these are anything other than standard stalking cases.

(Finch, 2001, p. 114)

Some research even concludes that news coverage of interpersonal crimes can produce increases in such crimes in society (e.g., Vives-Cases, Torrubiano-Dominguez, & Álvarez-Dardet, 2009). The media both project and reflect biases of the public in general, and policymakers and scholars in particular (Welch, Fenwick, & Roberts, 1998). The media unsurprisingly tend to be drawn to the more deviant types of crime stories (Anger...