The best thing about getting older is that you accept yourself.
You don’t have to be fashionable.
You don’t have to dye your hair.
You don’t have to wear makeup, though you need it more than you ever have.
You will never again attempt to squeeze yourself into a sparkly mermaid gown for a wedding.
You are settled in a relationship, or revel in your solitude.
So all is well until…
Your obsessive ex starts cyberharrassing you.
Perhaps I should use the word “cyberobsession.”
He tracked me down on the internet, as will sometimes happen.
My husband didn’t understand why he had surfaced after 30 years. I thought he was harmless and pitied him for being alone.
it soon became apparent that I shouldn’t have mentioned my blog. I love to have readers, but his attention was excessive.
His long, personal emails made me uncomfortable. Sometimes I detected veiled hostility. I thought he was drinking and emailing. When I learned he had lied about his relationship status, I thought, Oh, thank God! I don’t have to worry about him. But in his increasingly incoherent emails, I wasn’t quite sure what was true and what was false. Oh, no, I thought. He’s having a breakdown. After he sent me a long “snail” letter ranting about a counselor who did not know his situation from the news (!) or anything about his former workplace, I urged him to see a psychiatrist. When he replied he didn’t need one, I ended the correspondence.
My husband helped me block him from my email and blog comments. Being obsessed, my ex then tracked me down at my Mirabile Dictu email address to say he knew I had blocked him and would unsubscribe from my blog.
A completely unneccessary communication, but thank God.
And now he has resubscribed.
“Why?” I asked my husband.
“To upset you.”
Apparently such behavior is common among exes on the internet.
Dear Reader, is there any way I can block him from subscribing to the blog? Any suggestions?
mirabile dictu 
I don’t know enough about such things: I know you can filter an address out from your gmail. I remember there is a way of blocking someone from even seeing your mail. Contact wordpress and ask.
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I think I need a computer genius to do this. WordPress Help doesn’t address it, but in various forums one can see it is a problem for others. There doesn’t seem to be much you can do.
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I think you can set your blog to be viewed by invitation only – maybe doing that for a while would discourage your ex, although, of course, it’d be a shame to bar casual readers from reading your posts. Fingers crossed that he gets bored soon.
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That certainly IS an option, but I’ll just tough it out! 🙂
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Oh dear. I thought you had some words of wisdom on the Kathleen Hale/Blythe Harris stalking situation.
Not cool, Kat’s ex. Leave her alone.
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Kathleen who?:) ( I’ll look it up.) Yes, his behavior is tres uncool, and I hope he heeds your words.
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No way to block him, even if you move to invitation only. Tres uncool dude can create a thousand new email aliases that will keep you guessing who’s who forever. Sorry! Take good care. Best, Kevin
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Kevin, thanks for the info. I’ll go seize the beautiful October day and forget about this glitch in the pleasures of the internet!
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So sorry to hear this Kat – he needs to leave you alone and get a life (as you already have a very happy one and don’t need him in it). Good luck in finding a solution – I wish I was techno enough to help….
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Thank you, Karen. I can’t imagine what got into him! Since we can block people from our comments, you would think we could block them from subscription. But, as Kevin points out it probably wouldn’t help. I’m glad I posted this because at least I learned of my options.
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