Can a Rented Emotional Surrogate Help End Stalker Dependency? — A Radical New Approach to Emotional Rehabilitation

Introduction: Why Stalker Behavior Is Harder to “Fix” Than It Seems

When most people hear the word “stalker,” they think of someone dangerous, obsessive, and irrational.
The typical response? Restraining orders, criminal charges, or psychiatric evaluation.

But in many real-world cases, the stalker isn’t simply malicious or out of control — they’re trapped in something that looks a lot like emotional dependency.
Some even describe themselves as feeling unable to stop, despite knowing their actions are wrong or harmful.

“I know I’m crossing a line.”
“But if I let go, I don’t know who I am anymore.”

That tension — between awareness and compulsion — suggests that stalking, in some cases, isn’t just criminal behavior, but a psychological loop that hasn’t been completed.

The Limits of Existing Solutions

Medical and Legal Tools Can Only Go So Far

There are, of course, many tools already in place:

• Antipsychotic medication for delusional-type stalkers
• CBT and behavioral therapy for obsessive behavior
• Legal frameworks: restraining orders, surveillance, mandated distancing
• Victim protection programs and shelters

However, none of these truly address the inner emotional architecture of someone who has become psychologically dependent on another person.

Often, these measures result in:

• Compliance without internal change
• Temporary restraint, followed by relapse
• A false sense of resolution — until the urge returns

Distance Isn’t the Same as Detachment

Restraining someone doesn’t remove their emotional fixation.
In fact, it may even intensify the obsession by turning it into a forbidden narrative or unresolved longing.

In that sense, stalker behavior may be closer to addiction than aggression.

The Addiction Analogy: A Loop That Must Be Completed

Just like substance use disorders, stalking often follows a closed emotional loop:

1. Distress or emptiness
2. Fixation on a person as a “solution” or “anchor”
3. Temporary relief through proximity, contact, or fantasy
4. Rejection or loss triggers crisis
5. Return to step 1, often stronger than before

This mirrors what we see in alcohol or gambling addictions:
The person doesn’t seek pleasure — they seek self-stabilization. Without their “anchor,” they feel like they’re falling apart.

That’s why merely punishing or isolating someone often doesn’t work.
What’s missing isn’t consequences — it’s completion.

In Alcohol Recovery, Support Groups Offer Completion

Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is built on one key insight:
Addiction isn’t just a behavioral problem. It’s a social and emotional one.

AA meetings don’t tell participants to “just stop drinking.”
Instead, they let members talk through the emotional reasons behind their addiction, share stories, and feel less alone in their struggle.

This structure offers:

• Peer mirrors: “I’m not the only one feeling this”
• A safe space to confess, without judgment
• Gradual detachment from the identity of being “dependent”

Now imagine if stalker support had something similar —
A way to process the dependency without acting on it.

The Challenge: Emotional Exposure Can Also Backfire

Here’s where things get tricky.

If we simply gathered people with stalker tendencies into a group setting, as we do with alcohol recovery, we’d risk several dangerous outcomes:

• Mutual validation of harmful behavior
  (“You did that too? Maybe I’m not so bad.”)
• New fixations triggered by others’ stories
• Competitive escalation or fantasizing
• Group cohesion turning into a twisted echo chamber

This is especially risky for people in the early stages of obsession —
those who are still uncertain whether they’ve crossed a line.

For these individuals, hearing others confess might legitimize their own attachment — making the obsession harder, not easier, to dismantle.

So we need something different.

What If the Target Was “Rented” — and Safe?

What if, instead of real targets (ex-partners, celebrities, coworkers),
a stalker could engage with a simulated or role-played surrogate,
designed to:

• Reflect back emotional patterns
• Offer controlled interaction
• Enforce boundaries
• And ultimately, help end the cycle safely

This idea, which we’ll explore fully in Part 2, centers around a new kind of therapeutic role:

A “rented emotional surrogate” — someone trained to simulate the relationship in a structured, temporary, and psychologically guided setting.

This is not about indulging the behavior.
It’s about giving the emotional pattern a place to play out — and end — without harm.

What Is a “Rented Emotional Surrogate”?

The concept is deceptively simple:

A trained professional who temporarily “plays the role” of the stalker’s target — under strict therapeutic conditions.

This surrogate would not be the real person the stalker is fixated on, but would mimic key elements of the relationship:

• Emotional tone
• Boundaries and dynamics
• Style of interaction (messages, voice, body language, etc.)

All of this would happen within a controlled environment — supervised by clinicians or trained facilitators — with a clear goal:

To allow the stalker to confront their dependency, process the fantasy, and eventually complete the emotional loop that has kept them stuck.

This isn’t a “service” in the commercial sense. It’s a structured intervention — part therapy, part performance, part emotional rehabilitation.

Why Would This Work?

Stalking often isn’t about the person being targeted — it’s about what that person represents:

• Security
• Validation
• Escape from inner emptiness

The “rented surrogate” model provides a safe way to simulate the relationship, then gradually introduce:

• Frustration (limits)
• Distance (fading contact)
• Ambiguity (emotional uncertainty)
• Closure (final boundaries)

These aren’t punishments. They are experiential tools for deconstructing emotional myths like:

• “They’ll eventually come around”
• “I just need one more chance”
• “This connection is different — it’s fate”

Risks and Ethical Concerns

Clearly, this model raises sensitive questions. Without proper safeguards, it could be misused or misunderstood. Here are the primary concerns — and how they could be addressed.

The key lies in designing the surrogate relationship as a therapeutic protocol, not a personal interaction.
Much like actors in trauma-informed theater, surrogates must learn how to “receive” intense emotion without personalizing it.

Has Anything Like This Been Tried Before?

Surprisingly, yes — in adjacent fields:

1. Psychodrama (Psychological Roleplay)

Therapists stage scenes with role-players to help clients process trauma, regret, or relationship breakdowns.

Patients speak to a chair as if it were a lost parent, an abusive partner, or a younger version of themselves.

2. Rental Family Services (Japan)

Clients rent actors to play roles — estranged parents, fake spouses — for events, social performance, or emotional healing.

Though not designed for stalker rehabilitation, it demonstrates that people do find comfort in symbolic, scripted human interaction.

3. AI Companions

Apps like Replika offer users emotional connection through chatbot companions — useful for loneliness, but limited in emotional realism or boundary work.

A human surrogate adds the nuance, discomfort, and emotional mirroring that AI currently lacks.

Designing the Program: Boundaries, Not Fantasy

A successful surrogate-based support program would need clear features:

• Entry criteria: Only participants who acknowledge their behavior as problematic
• Scripts and phases: From emotional engagement to guided detachment
• Support team: Psychologists, social workers, behavioral specialists
• Anonymity and safety: No sharing of real names, no contact outside sessions
• End date: Every surrogate “relationship” has a planned, rehearsed conclusion

This is not about pretending. It’s about simulating structured endings, something most stalkers never got from the real relationship.

From Punishment to Emotional Rehabilitation

We often treat stalker behavior as either:

• A crime to be punished
• A pathology to be medicated
• A danger to be locked away

But these approaches, while important for safety, rarely address the emotional mechanics of why the behavior started — and why it continues.

By introducing the concept of a rented emotional surrogate, we begin to shift the question:

From “How do we stop them?”
To “What would it take for this pattern to end?”

And sometimes, the answer is: one final conversation — one that’s staged, safe, and meant to be the last.

Final Thoughts: Ending the Loop, Not Just Breaking It

Stalker behavior may look irrational from the outside. But at its core, it often reflects a desperate need for emotional certainty.

Ending that loop requires more than commands, laws, or diagnoses.
It requires an experience that helps the person feel,

“This is over. And I can survive that.”

That’s what the rented surrogate offers:
A way to end — without hurting someone real.

🔗 References

• Stalking: Patterns, Motivations, and Intervention Strategies (NIJ Journal)
• Rental Families and Surrogate Relationships in Japan (The Atlantic)
• The Use of Psychodrama in Clinical Practice (Frontiers in Psychology)
• Replika and the Rise of AI Companions (MIT Technology Review)