Ladies, of course we all understand the importance of stalking the shit out of gathering information about a potential suitor, that guy you hooked up with last week, or whatever other person you might be obsessed with until the next lunar cycle. I mean, if you weren’t able to gather this information without his knowledge, you would have to resort to actually involving him in all the time you spend thinking about him (and I pity any man who has to be exposed to the mind of a female in the infatuation stage of a relationship). My father is of the mind set that “games are stupid” and that “all girls need to do is keep a lot of mystery and let a guy get caught up.” Thanks, dad, for delivering the ultimate game theory. I knew I liked you, even if I barely passed HotPiece’s quiz. And so, we need to be mysterious about our feelings for a guy, meaning he can’t know any of the ridiculous measures we go to to keep tabs on him. At least that’s how I interpreted it.
Before attempting any of the following scenarios, you absolutely must consult at least three of your best girls. They should obviously already know every detail of the situation, since that’s the point of best girlfriends. They’ll be able to give you an informed opinion on what to do, and know well enough to only stop you if your long-term reputation is at stake (because anyone who uses a silly thing like “the voice of reason” to attempt to stop you before that is going to be completely ignored). Consultation with your girls is very important because any solo attempt at the following is doomed to failure and you will end up being known as “the creepy chick who slept in the fire closet that night to see if Lewis came home alone.”
And so, in order of increasing psychosis, the following are the ways to properly…research your guy (on a scale of curiosity-restraining order).
Online Stalking
Creeping on facebook, twitter, his fraternity’s website, and even linked-in and google if necessary is such a no-brainer that it barely qualifies as stalking. Still, I’d like to ease everyone into the stages of psycho we’re going to cover. (There’s a reason you get some miso soup before anyone convinces you it’s ok to eat raw sea urchin.) For one of the few times I will ever recommend some self-control, I am going to ask you ladies to hold off on this until after the first date (or equivalent social interaction) to allow for some sufficient interest to be established. Call me old-fashioned, but your first impression of a fellow should be based on how he interacts with you in person, not the vision of him that you will fabricate in your own head. Another, more obvious pitfall of checking him out on social media is that it becomes super easy to slip information that will be a dead giveaway that you’d done your homework. The absolute WORST thing you can say in response to any fact he tells you about himself (at least until you are unofficially exclusive) is “I know.” Also, be forewarned: there are some forms of social media which allow the owner of a profile to see who’s viewed it. Linked-In is the most likely way to fall victim to this tragedy, though I hear e-harmony does it too. But really…May god have mercy on your soul if you have fallen for a guy in college who is already on e-harmony. My guess is he had a kid at 17, married the chick because he had to, and you’ve now got a crazy ex-wife and bratty kid on your hands. So I’d suggest getting off e-harmony and getting on a barstool; you’re in college. Jesus.
Arranged Run-In
Moving on to an activity that is going to require a little more planning, we have the arranged run-in. (We think we’re so clever.) This is probably the method of stalking with the most variation in difficulty (and so also the most variation in crazy). Arranging a run-in when y’all have a 1:00 class in adjacent buildings is significantly less “challenging” than managing to somehow show up to his best friend’s concert across town because you just really love Ska-Polka fusion bands so much. In any case, taking some control of the situation by deliberately engineering it allows you to plan your outfit, hair, supposed activities for the rest of the day/weekend, topics of conversation, jokes, names to drop, etc.
There are two major risk factors here. First, you have to be super careful about talking for too long (this was an “accident” you don’t want to seem too into it). This can be hard to do when you are both on the same 15 minute long walk across grounds. Look at your phone, make a grimace, and tell him you really have to call this girl, but it was SO great to see him. Second and most importantly, you are going to really have to be able to sell that you were in that location on your own accord. No undergrad has ever successfully schemed on a guy by just happening to study in the law library, and similarly, unless you can actually talk in detail about your other three favorite ska-polka fusion bands, for the love of God do not go there. My suggestion is to find the sisters who are always in the library when they aren’t blacking out or in the process of doing so, alert them to watch out for said love interest, and then you can show up in a cute outfit and sit with them after they just happen to pick the table next to him when they walk in. Teamwork, kids.
Casual Neighborhood Stroll
This, ladies, can get weird, so I am going to give you very clear options. There is a solid rule here. You can only scope out his place of residence to see who is grilling with him and his roomies if you are engaged in one of two situations: walking a dog or jogging. The dog walking scenario is excellent, and be aware that your choice of dog can greatly influence how the situation plays out. If you have a big dog, or a puppy who will eventually be big, he has every reason to wave you over and ask about the pup. Conversely, if you have a smaller dog, you have a reason to be walking slowly and can not be accused of walking by his house just to draw attention to yourself with man bait (even though that’s exactly what you’re doing). Don’t have a dog? No problem. Most dog owners will happily accept an offer to relieve them of dog-walking duties for a day, so you can easily pick and choose the dog, and thus, how the situation will go. (Side note: I have only ever lent my dog out for this, never performed it myself.)
Jogging by his house is also excellent. You are going to have a socially acceptable reason to be dressed in spandex from head to toe with your pillow tits bouncing all over the place, and you will be completely unapproachable because you are running and have headphones in. Again, making it look like you just happened to be there, and didn’t show up looking for him. Completely unacceptable scenarios here are any that involve you randomly walking around his neighborhood, or GOD FORBID on the property where he lives.
The Drive-By
The drive-by is the official “other side of the fence” when it comes to the differentiation between socially acceptable and psycho bitch. I’m not going to say that you should never EVER do it, but you need a damn good reason and some serious planning. Learn from my high school mistakes. My best friend’s exclusive (but not FBO) boy suddenly dropped off the map one Saturday when his ex was back from college. Naturally, my friend was freaking out, and because I genuinely like the guy to this day, I told her to quit being crazy. We attempted to distract her, but even after going together for bikini waxes, horse back riding (poor planning, in retrospect), belting out Motown with the windows down, and grabbing some kind of delicious calorie bomb for dinner, she was still distraught and on the verge of calling him to say something she’d undoubtedly regret. Somehow, we all concluded that a casual drive by his house (where his car would obviously be) would alleviate her fears. Unfortunately, his car wasn’t there, and we were amateurs, and the result was far worse than the embarrassment of receiving a text the next morning that said “Just got all this, sorry. My phone was dead.”
What we learned:
-If he’s not there, do not attempt to find him. So going to her house next is a bad idea.
-Do not attempt a drive-by on a dead-end road.
-Drive someone else’s car, not the baby blue Z71 avalanche, that is unmistakably yours.
-If there’s another woman, do not assume that she’s any less crazy than you are.
-If you get caught, you’re caught. Do not attempt to out-maneuver him (or her), and they know this isn’t your neighborhood. Pulling into a random driveway with the lights off won’t work.
If you’ve ignored all the other advice and somehow find yourself engaged in a high speed car chase, remember that stoplights happen, and you’ll probably have to face him in the middle of an 8-lane intersection. So, unless you are confident that you have the same level of skill that is provided to DEA agents in an intensive 8 week course, Do. Not. Attempt.
Unwitting Fraternity Brother Pawn
I have no clue who originally thought this could be a good idea. I only know of one chick who ever executed this successfully, and while she was married to the guy for a while, I don’t think either of them mentally recovered from such a soul-rotting jump start to their relationship. Having never been in this situation, nor close enough to an appropriate scenario to be privy to the details, I can only issue warnings instead of advice. I assume that these scenarios generally occur when your average card carrying crazy finds out that the object of her desires (who has never said or so much as indicated that he was exclusively involved with her) is sighted with another female. She will then, naturally, decide to “give him a taste of his own medicine,” thereby completely disregarding the separate standards of sexual conduct for men and women. If you have walked out of two different rooms of the same fraternity house in the same year, you should seriously remember to take him to your place next time re-evaluate your priorities.
The only way I can envision this working, and the way that my one example managed it successfully, is to ensure that the guy likes you at least enough that he does not want to see you with other dudes…then be seen with one of his fraternity brothers. This allows you as a way into the house to check up on him, while also serving as a means to make him jealous. The KEY with this is that you do not exceed any contact with this brother beyond a kiss on the cheek, and you need witnesses to that…unless you can 100% rely on him to go back and bitch about being blue-balled after paying for an expensive dinner. However, the chances of this backfiring, and you being dubbed the Slut Groupie, are just as high, if not higher than your chances of success.
The Straight Up Crazy
I am pretty sure these levels of stalking have only been successful in situations where you are Kate Upton, you can get your legs over your head without developing an unsightly belly skin situation, and the victim is madly in love with you and at least as insecure about the “relationship” as you are. Should this relationship be successful, he will propose to you immediately after you’re done, well…being a psycho. This level of insanity includes sneaking a keylogger on his keyboard to figure out if he is keeping any passwords from you, the earlier mentioned sleeping in the fire closet (or his closet), paying off bartenders to text you when they see him, and the like. Of course, let’s not forget the fake pregnancy test after he blacked out but did not ACTUALLY have sex with you. Hey, in your deluded mind, you need to know how he would respond to that before you can actually sleep with him.
I really wish that any of that was made up, but it’s all far too rooted in reality, (even if I make a concerned effort to write these types of stories off as urban legend to my guy friends). Not that I’ve attempted most of them…Really the craziest thing I have ever done to a guy I was interested was the dreaded triple text, but my point is, when you’re head over heels for a guy, sometimes shit gets weird. I have far too many friends who have been mind-fucked passed the point of being able to execute anything with a modicum of discretion. If you fall into this category, my only advice to you is to google various personality disorders and see if perhaps you can identify with any.
Nice Move232
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