On the one hand, it is quite possible that there were obsessive behaviors that led this man to be labelled a pseudo-stalker. I don't think it is really all that difficult, in the throws of a particularly head-over-heals infatuation, to do things that give off icky-vibes to uninterested beloveds. I can remember getting very irritated at a guy who just wouldn't stop staring in my direction. Then again, I remember doing something similar to a guy when consumed by my own puppy-love. It wasn't stalking, but it was over-the-top and made him uncomfortable. Since we tend to expect men to be the ones making advances (that's less true as time goes on, but still pretty much the norm), they are the ones who are more vulnerable to accusations that their amourous intentions are disordered and pathological. It is not that hard to trigger people's alarms, especially, as one poster has already noted, in these days of hyper-sensitivity and awareness to all things dangerous. If he's still consumed by the relationship-that-never-was, and since he seems to feel doubtful about his own behavior (whether due to the behavior itself, or due to feeling like his point of view is totally invalidated by her and her gang of "hipsters"), maybe therapy is a good idea (though, as many have already pointed out, gettin' the heck outta Dodge may be just the therapy he needs).

However, is it not also possible (and not mutually exclusive) that the woman is blowing things out of proportion and using her power to cry "stalker" in order to humiliate and ostrasize someone she does not like? I tend to feel somewhat protective of women who speak out about sexual harassment, since so often they have been ridiculed and silenced, and I hate the knee-jerk tendency in some cicles to try to minimize and dismiss women's concerns about these things out-of-hand. However, women can and sometimes do use the ability to claim victim status as a tool to hurt others. We should not assume, just because she's talking him up as someone with a serious issue, that he's the one in need of help. Maybe she's the one who needs some time on the couch with a trained professional.

You are quite right that the LW connecting poor attendance at his musical event with a failed relationship from years ago comes off as quite odd. I hadn't thought about the issue of the time lapse. While I still think she may have cried foul over relatively minor behavior (it's just not clear to me what he did, honestly -- letters at work? is that stalking or just being socially dumb? perhaps I'm missing something about that), he does seem pretty obsessed now. Can't rule out the possibility that she is actually or was actually at one point the one obsessed, or that they both are, but he really doesn't give much evidence to connect the poor attendance at his concert with the relationship issue, except that cool people are somehow involved. Strange. The more I read the letter the less sense it makes to me.

To be honest, I'm rather happy that my personal examples don't rise to a severe enough level to seem comparable, but they were an attempt to sympathize, and I can see how either my transgressions or those of my male admirer might have been blown out of proportion and turned in to something that they weren't if any parties involved had wanted to do so.

Still, I do think it's true that some women sometimes cry foul at male attentions for less than stellar reasons (I had some nerdly friends in high school that got accused of being all types of pervert for having the temerity to ask a slightly less nerdly girl to the prom - I have no doubt that such behavior continues past high school for those whose maturity level does not develop much farther than that), and I don't think it's knee jerk to note that we don't really know what happened and hence don't know if her reaction was appropriate (or even remotely close to what is reported in this letter). It would be knee jerk to just outright assume that she is exagerating and/or out to get him, but it is not so simply to allow for the possibility.

It is not inconsistant with a desire to respect victims of sexual harrassment to also note that sometimes some women make unfounded or exagerrated accusations against men, and I think it's important to listen to the stories of some of the men who have felt confused and anxious about this, and who may have been wrongfully accused. Not to delay judgement about such things can lead to serious injustices that ultimately do great harm to the cause of women survivors. To give an (admitedly, at this point, rather sensationalized) example, look at how the Duke rape case appears to be playing out.