We all grew up reading fairytales and watching movies about true love, happily ever after, and romance gone right, so when you find yourself in the dating pool, and it seems shallow and bug-infested (on a good day), it’s easy to wonder where things went wrong.
Dating is hard. What should be a walk in the park is sometimes a walk down a creepy dark hallway with signs that say to keep out and turn around, but we walk it anyway because we’d all like to find our person. Sometimes, however, finding your person is a lot harder than it seems, and a recent video highlights one reason why.
A TikTok user named Olga shared a video to the platform with a series of uncomfortable voice messages she received from a man who took a business card from her when they had a chance (see also: unfortunate) encounter.
From the very beginning, it’s clear that Dimitri isn’t lacking at all in confidence, or rather, total cockiness and arrogance. In fact, we were taken aback at the forcefulness of his message. Don’t get us wrong; confidence is a powerful trait β it can be mesmerizing and attractive and almost draw you in magnetically, but that’s confidence, and that’s where it ends.
Dimitri is arrogant, to say the least, and somewhat demanding, and when that line is crossed β things go from confident and charming to snakey and scary.
This TikTok user agrees with the overwhelming idea that his needing to confirm his relationship status was unnecessary, evident in the first seconds of his message and his delivery as a whole.
The voicemails sound like they could be in the starting moments of a Criminal Minds episode or something we’ve seen in a true crime series or listened to in a podcast.
TikToker Michele Strother shared a recommendation that we hope Olga took to heart.
Strother’s advice isn’t something to take lightly, and while each state has its list of requirements before a restraining order is put in place, his behavior isn’t something to take lightly. In fact, it’s downright unnerving. Filing a restraining order can be nerve-wracking in and of itself. Even if one is granted, everyone knows that a piece of paper won’t stop a stalker, it won’t stop someone hell-bent on causing harm to another, but attempting to attain one is at least a show of necessity; it’s allowing law enforcement to see that something is wrong, that someone is acting unlawfully.
StalkingAwareness.org shares statistics regarding stalking victims in the U.S., and it might alarm (but likely won’t surprise) you that it’s estimated that 13.5 million people are stalked each year with almost half experiencing some variation of stalking behavior β including unwanted phone calls and/or being followed β per week.
Stalking happens to people of all circumstances, sex, race, etc., with 1 in 3 victims being female and 1 in 6 being male. Nearly 58% of female victims and 48% of male victims experienced stalking before age 25, and victims of stalking at any age will be up against higher rates of insomnia, anxiety, depression, and social dysfunction.
If you’ve never been a victim of stalking, it might be easy to write off those voicemails as just another bad guy β someone totally full of themselves and awful β but it becomes more than that quickly, and it’s normal for her to feel fearful.
His ask to “call as soon as she has the courage” might have been (what he thought) some over-confident flirting, but it showed up almost as a warning, like “call when you have the courage, call when you think you’re brave enough.”
We hope Olga has enough courage to do the opposite because bravery in this situation isn’t calling the stalker and playing a game of keeping him complacent; true fearlessness is understanding that his advances aren’t just unwarranted, they’re unnatural β and she doesn’t have to sign up to keep receiving them.
For those wondering what happened next, Olga did post an update video with her father, and if you pay close attention, you’ll notice that she tells followers what his profession is: a cop. It looks like Dimitri truly messed with the wrong woman this time β in every manner of speaking. A father is going to go to battle for their daughter, and an officer at that?
We have a feeling that Olga will be well taken care of from here on out, and perhaps if Dimitri himself ever sees these videos, or if someone like him does, they’ll think twice before exhibiting stalking behavior again. No “stupid TV show” list of accolades is enough to downplay the aggression in his messages, and no one should have to fear the ringing of their own phone wondering what they’ll hear when the next voice message notification appears.