Obsessive relational intrusion

Invading privacy
Obsessive relational intrusion (ORI) occurs when someone knowingly and repeatedly invades another person's privacy boundaries by using intrusive tactics to try to get closer to that person. It includes behaviors such as repeated calls and texts, malicious contact, spreading rumors, stalking, and violence (kidnapping and assault). Drs. Brian Spitzberg and William Cupach, the creators of the term, define ORI as "repeated and unwanted pursuit and invasion of one's sense of physical or symbolic privacy by another person, either stranger or acquaintance, who desires and/or presumes an intimate relationship". Some victims of ORI have no preexisting relationship with or interest in their pursuers; others know their pursuers, but are less interested in making an existing relationship more intimate.

There are several key components of ORI that distinguish it from other similar relational patterns. First, ORI involves a lack of mutual agreement regarding the nature or even the existence of a relationship. While the person obsessed with the relationship is attempting to make a closer connection, the object of ORI desires freedom from continued forced contact. Spitzberg writes that "this dialectical tension is endemic to the formation and ongoing construction of all interpersonal relationships". Many victims of ORI have also experienced sexual coercion, and the coping responses used for both tend to be similar. Additionally, the more serious the intrusion (for example, violence), the more formal the coping response (for example, calling the police). ORI behavior, as well as non ORI sexually coercive behavior, can involve types of coercion identified as deception coercion, mild force coercion, psychological coercion and severe force coercion.

The authors Brian Spitzberg and William Cupach developed ORI in 1998, and published their research in their book The Dark Side of Close Relationships.