She Says Her Neighbor Has Harassed Her for Years—But She Still Lets Herself Get Pulled Back In

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Getting along with your neighbors is great, but it is important to remember that you don’t have to engage with them if you don’t want to.

What would you do if you had lived next to a woman for many years, and the entire time she harassed you and tried to control you in a variety of ways (among other things)?

That is what was happening to the woman in this story, and despite claiming that her neighbor is a narcissist, she keeps allowing herself to engage with her, which always makes things worse.

While the neighbor does sound awful, it is her own fault for even talking to her anymore. Read through the full story below and see what you think.

I live next door to an 83-year old woman who moved here about 30 years ago. One of her four kids owns the house.

This woman sounds awful.

My parents used to own the house I live in. This woman has always been the typical narcissist. Her main currency is malicious gossip. She will twist your words into something entirely different from what you are saying right in front of you and then run off before you can correct her.

Of course she then goes around spreading the lies in the neighborhood. I actually don’t care all that much about it because if the people she talks to are dumb enough to believe her then it’s no loss to me and they may already be looking for a reason to hate me anyway.

If she is trespassing, the police need to be involved.

She has no respect for the word ‘private’ in private property and wants to behave as though we are living in a commune and has the right to know every minor detail about your life as well as actually dictate how you live.

She once became very obscessed about which bedroom I would be sleeping in, acting as though she owned the house rather than me.

Her objections to any privacy border should be ignored completely.

She has zero respect for anyone’s privacy. Our back yards are close together and our decks face each other, and her kitchen window faces directly towards my deck.

Naturally she objects to the idea of having any kind of a privacy border between our yards, being the nosy invasive narcissist she is. I considered a fence but our state only allows them to be 6 FT high, which is not high enough to shield me from her kitchen window and deck.

I have planted some trees which I’m hoping will eventually help a little.

If her tenants are loud past a certain time at night, call the police.

Even though one of her daughters owns the house, the first several years she lived here, she was constantly renting out her basement and apparently her daughter didn’t object.

She would rent to college kids who would have parties on the deck, making us feel like we were living next to a college dorm.

Wow, the police absolutely need to be involved here.

Then one time she saw an ad on Craig’s List from some young men who were out of drug rehab and looking for a place to rent. She told us about it and we told her it didn’t sound like a good idea but she was going to go ahead and rent to them whether we liked it or not.

As I could have predicted, they ended up running an illegal drug running operation out of her basement with people constantly coming and going, obviously to make purchases.

It made our small-town neighborhood feel like an inner city slum. We did not feel safe and it was particularly stressful on my late mother.

This sounds like it was years ago; she needs to focus on the issues happening today.

Then during National Night Out, when the street was blocked off, one of the tenants sped past the barrier and according to my late mother who was at the event, they came very close to hitting a child with their car, then parked facing the wrong way in front of the house.

Police were called and the nightmare was finally over. I was hoping that after this incident that maybe someone in her family would decide that maybe she lacked the common sense, judgment and consideration for others to be in charge of a house but no such luck.

Once again, why would she talk to this neighbor at all? Ever?

A couple of years ago she informed me that she would be having a husband and wife as guests for 2-3 weeks who were waiting to move into a new house.

The man looked to be maybe in his late 70s. Oddly, I never saw his wife. The neighbor came up to me and was very eager for me to speak to him about getting advice for growing trees, and unfortunately I made the mistake of speaking to him.

This is very odd behavior.

I mentioned to him that I was considering getting a fence and his face instantly turned red and he blew up at me in a very threatening way, yelled ‘NO!’ , acting as though it was HIS property rather than mine.

The neighbor was standing nearby and acted as if she thought there was nothing wrong with the threatening way he spoke to me.

If the dog is being neglected, which seems to be the case, call animal control.

He also had a huge dog that he left tied to the deck all day and it had an ear-splitting bark that left me partially hearing impaired every time I came back into the house.

They both knew it was a problem for me but did nothing about the problem. No consideration for me at all.

Wait. This person is visiting the neighbor that she hates?

After that first horrific encounter with him I should have never spoken to him again, but at the time I figured it was only a temporary 2-3 week nightmare.

It ended up being 6 dreadful weeks when he changed his mind about the house he was going to buy. I also thought that I would be visiting with a husband AND a wife, but the wife was never there.

This makes no sense. Why is she interacting with any of these people?

I soon realized that he had multiple mental and cognitive issues. He was a blatant sexist who had no respect for women and acted as though he was the master and I was a slave he had just purchased and I had better obey him.

He would immediately shake his head to shut me up anytime I tried to speak. I was to be seen but not heard. It was exhausting trying to not agitate him but he would end up blowing up at me for no apparent reason.

Everyone in this story seems to have mental health issues.

Sometimes his head would jerk back and forth twice, followed by a sudden change in personality like he was hallucinating and acted as though he was a parent and I was his child.

As time went on, despite the abusive way he treated me, as well as the fact that he supposedly had a wife, I started getting a very creepy sense from him, that he was getting inappropriate ideas about me.

I also strongly suspected that my neighbor was encouraging him in this direction. None of it made any sense.

Who cares what the neighbor ‘approved’ of?

I decided to disengage with him, but my neighbor did not approve of that. Clearly she had decided that I had to engage with him whether I wanted to or not.

It seemed obvious that there was some kind of a juvenile matchmaking game going on and I was viewed as a piece of meat that the two of them thought they could do whatever they wanted with.

Now the other neighbors are in on it?

I also got the sense that her housekeeper and my other next door neighbor were privy to the plot.

My neighbor kept coming up with some kind of cockamamie excuses to get me to engage with him and when I told her that I wasn’t interested, that I wanted nothing to do with him she would become very hostile towards me.

Just stop engaging with the neighbors. It is really that simple.

It was a very tense and stressful six weeks, but the guest finally left. When I saw my neighbor afterwards in the back yard she was very hostile towards me and acted as though I had done something wrong, but of course she couldn’t tell me what she was accusing me of having done wrong.

Typical narcissist- causing other people grief and stress, trying to control their lives and never taking accountability for their actions. Instead they shift the blame to their victims. These have got to be some of the most evil people amongst us.

She doesn’t owe her neighbor any type of information. Just ignore her.

A few months later I spoke to her on the phone when she was out of town and told her about how abusive her guest had been to me and she seemed to understand, so I thought that was that.

However, a few months later when she returned home, I woke up to someone banging on my back deck door. It creeped me out. I open the blinds and door and she started raging at me like a lunatic, not making any sense.

Call the police.

She was in a blind rage and not in control of her faculties and no matter what I said to her, she acted as though she couldn’t understand or respect any points I was making.

Of course, I knew it was her being furious because I had refused to let her force me into a relationship with her abusive mentally disturbed guest. When she was done she went over to my other neighbor’s house and was obviously discussing it with him.

The solution is so obvious. Stop engaging with the neighbor.

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It’s pretty disturbing to know that you live next door to someone who believes that they have the authority to dictate your life and you have no rights to make your own decisions.

I consider what she tried to do to me as attempted assault and battery by forcing me to have some kind of a relationship with a verbally abusive, mentally unstable and cognitively challenged old man. I would have never felt safe being alone with him in a house or car. And I absolutely just wasn’t interested, period.

Just file a report with the police. And get cameras on the house.

I really wanted to file some kind of a complaint but I felt that I should have some kind of solid proof to back up my complaints and I had no idea how to do that when the harassment doesn’t take place via email or text.

Since she is a disgusting extreme narcissist I would have to be concerned about fake retaliatory accusations from her.

Many of these complaints seem to be from a very long time ago.

Also, a year or so before this nightmare, she had gotten stuck on her deck when her knee gave out and she asked me for assistance getting up, which I gave her.

She seemed so grateful for my help but then ‘thanks’ me by making my life utter hell by trying to force me into an abusive, potantially dangerous relationship against my will?

Do not help her. Do not talk to her.

If she were to need that kind of assistance again, I am not sure I would give it because I would have to wonder what kind of a nightmare I would have to endure from her afterwards.

She doesn’t deserve any help from me, IMO, after what she tried to do to me. I also feel that it should be her kids’ responsibility to make sure she is taken care of, not mine.

Why would she feel it is her responsibility?

But since I am here and they are not it feels like she is more my problem than theirs and I am not OK with that.

Three of them live in the area so it isn’t like they are all that far away. I took care of my own parents and expect others to do the same but from the looks of it they pretty much leave her to her own devices.

At first I felt bad for this lady, but now I’m beginning to think that she is the one with mental health issues. If her neighbor is really this bad, then why would she engage with her at all?

Read on to see what the people in the comments have to say about it.

Talking to the actual homeowner is a great idea.

This commenter is exactly right.

The problem is simple to solve, but she doesn’t seem to want to.

It really can be this simple, but she doesn’t want it to stop.

If you enjoyed this post, check out this story about neighbors who intentionally tank an open house sale because they want to buy the property themselves.

This is exactly what I was thinking, though.

At the end of the day, this is her own fault for allowing it to continue. She should have stopped engaging with her neighbor many years ago, but for some reason, she won’t.

To me, it seems like she likes the drama and attention. It makes me wonder if the neighbor is really as bad as this person tries to make her out to be.