Murderous intentions?
MANY people were surprised when Sidney Brown, 36, shot and killed his ex-lover Verona Clarke, 33, in front of their two-year-old child at a day care in Linstead, St Catherine, two weeks ago. But others who had taken note of Brown’s activities, in the weeks and years preceding the attack, painted a picture of a man so overwrought with grief at the loss of his mate that he snapped.
Rejection seemed to be the straw that broke the camel’s back, after a relationship fuelled by jealousy, obsession and paranoia. On the outside Brown seemed normal, but beneath the exterior bubbled the kind of anger that led him to kill.
Counselling psychologist Ivret Williams said obsession is a state in which someone thinks about someone or something constantly or frequently, which eventually becomes an attitude.
“You think it, you feel it, and then you do it,” she explained. “So if someone is thinking about you constantly, their thoughts become feelings and feelings become actions. If you’re the centre of somebody’s thoughts, it’s going to elicit a feeling. When this becomes harmful is when the person realises that you are not reciprocating.”
According to information from Clarke’s family and taxi operators with whom Brown travelled, he was bitter about Clarke ending the relationship some two weeks prior. They said he was jealous and controlling, would call throughout the day while she was at work, call her supervisor, police her social media accounts, bad-talk her in public, and have bouts of anger when she ignored him.
Williams stressed that the end result of these thoughts and actions is usually harm to self and to the object of the obsession.
As such, she warned women about unwittingly fuelling a man’s obsession.
“It all depends on her emotional state and how the relationship started. She might have been low emotionally and at a state where she needed someone to affirm her and here was someone who came in, quite interested, and called and checked up on her. It can make a person feel needed and loved. But what you do not know is that this person may have been watching you for a long time and here is this person now getting closer and closer, and after a while you give out personal information without realising the person is having a databank on you,” she said.
“It is not normal for someone to be thinking about you 24/7, even if it’s your wife or husband or the most important person in your life. The person must have other interests. If you’re their only interest something is wrong – it is not healthy.”
SIGNS YOU MAY BE FUELLING HIS OBSESSION
1. Acting flattered at every gesture
“In the early stages of the obsession the woman may be flattered by the attention and may accept gifts gracefully. But then the other party may become controlling and the aim is to own you because the person thinks about you constantly, so the end result of that thinking process is to have you and hold you,” Williams pointed out. She further explained that the woman may not realise that this is an obsession and may see it as a mild interest and continue fuelling it by accepting the gifts even when a gut feeling may be telling her not to.
2. Being too needy or emotionally unstable
Williams said as women we work based on our needs. “The woman may be needing affection, so here is this guy showing her affection and at that point in time she may be emotionally low and she accepts the gifts and the attention given. She may fuel it by giving out personal information because it makes her feel important.”
3. Accepting late-night calls
“When you entertain him and begin to pour out your feelings, what you don’t realise is that this person is checking up on you to see if there is a man in the house who would maybe have a problem with you talking to him at 11:30 pm or 12:00 am, so the person will do things like that to check on your relationship status.”
