I Honestly Admit I Watched My Ex On Social Media, and I’m Going to Tell You What Made Me Do It

Erasing the people you broke up with from your memory is not easy. Many of us often check our ex’s Instagram and Facebook pages, and some people try to attract their ex’s attention, hoping to revive the old feelings. But experts say that such actions can actually damage our psychological health.

A CHEERY author decided to take the risk and explain how hard it was for her to break up with her boyfriend, and how she managed to lose the habit of peeking at his life on social media.

Hi! My name is Julia. Around 6 months ago, my boyfriend and I (let’s name him Mark) decided to break up. It seemed to be a mutual agreement — things just cooled down. But some time later, I realized that I was literally living on his Instagram page.

I’d regularly check it to see if Mark had posted anything new. What if there was a new girl in one of the photos or any indication that he was in a new relationship?

Unfortunately, he had new photos almost every day. I have to explain that my ex is a big traveler: he often goes to different places and gets new impressions to share with his subscribers.

I’d still like his photos and comment on them. But I was a bit bummed by the absence of any feedback. It seemed that Mark was ignoring me and all he could write was just a simple smiling face, the same one over and over again.

At the same time, I started uploading new photos to my page. It was a big thing for me, considering the fact that before we broke up, I had the same avatar for 3 years, and just around 15-20 pictures in my account.

What did I want to achieve? Maybe, I was trying to prove to myself that I had a full life of my own. I even asked my colleague to hold my hand, I photographed our fingers together and posted them online. And in order to make it obvious that it was my hand, I wore the bracelet that Mark had presented to me. I told my colleague it was just a prank for my ex, but he didn’t seem to buy it.

This photo quickly became the most popular one on my account. My friends liked it and congratulated me on my new relationship, and my relatives hinted they wanted to meet this mysterious boyfriend. But Mark continued to ignore me.

And then I decided to find out why — I mean, we’re not strangers. Maybe, my ex got a new girlfriend, and he was trying not to irritate her by texting with me? So, I decided to make an investigation — I created a file where I marked who my ex communicated with. I made a list of all the girls’ accounts Mark had subscribed to. There were 34 of them.

And then, I started monitoring their pages every day, looking for comments from Mark. And if I found a comment from him, I felt a rush of jealousy — why them and not me? At first, I neglected his school classmates and those I knew were married. But then, I reconsidered and added them just in case.

At the same time, I created a new page and started visiting my ex’s page regularly. I chose a very attractive photo for the avatar — it took me more than a day to find it and I finally chose it from a photo bank. I also filled the page with photos from my “trips”. Of course, they weren’t mine either, I just found them online.

I started liking his photos from my new profile. I thought it was impossible to ignore a girl like that. But Mark didn’t react in any way. I realized I didn’t know what else to do.

I decided to find out why I couldn’t forget my ex. And what would I do if he fell for my scam? Or worse, what if Mark came back to his senses and tried to get me, the real me, back? I would have to tolerate his lengthy trips or walk in the mountains with him!

At some point, I even realized I needed professional help. I was scared the therapist would laugh at me or judge my behavior, but she turned out to be a very delicate person.

It was during therapy that I realized that visiting his page all the time only nurtured my false hopes. Many of us share only the most positive moments of our lives online. So we start thinking about our partners in the most positive way possible and forget why we broke up in the first place.

It seems that if you just make a step to reconciliation, your life will be just as magical as it was during the first weeks after you met. But it’s not true.

I started looking for information about my problem online and found that therapists usually recommend asking yourself why you are peeking at your ex, and if it hinders your healing process and your own development. Yes, it’s hard to forget a person you were close with. But if you keep watching their feed every day, this transition period might take a really long time.

My therapist explained that visiting my ex’s page regularly may create an illusion that our relationship is ongoing. It was a way to stay in the relationship. But, it was just me, not him.

More than that, people stalking their exes online often do that in real life. They start looking for excuses to meet with their exes, dial their number “by mistake”, and “run into them.” At some point, I thought I was just a few steps away from such behavior. So I pulled myself together and unsubscribed from all of Mark’s social media.

I was constantly looking for support, reading other people’s stories. Once, I came across an expression, “an irresistible itch after a break up”. It fully described what I was feeling during that period. It turns out that I missed the regular things I did with my boyfriend — from his irritating habits of making noise in the kitchen at 6 a.m. to eating pizza together in the evening.

Yes, I realized that we both did the right thing by ending our relationship since we were too different. But as a result, it’s as if there was a hole in my life I was trying to fill by checking his Instagram every day.

I realized that my peeking was a bad habit and I decided to replace it with a new one, a good one. This is what many therapists recommend. They say that you need to invent a ritual that is really different from the things you did with your ex. If you were used to drinking lattes in a certain place together, try going for a run every morning instead. It’s even better to do it together with someone, like a friend or a neighbor, that has a healthy lifestyle.

I can’t say that changing habits was easy for me. There were times when I reached my phone to check on my ex and find out where he was and who he was with. But it got better over time, and now, I don’t think about my previous relationship for days on end.

Honestly, I’m not yet ready to have a friendship with Mark or subscribe to his Instagram page. And it’s not something I have to do. We all have our separate lives now.

Do you often check your ex’s pages, or do you prefer not knowing anything about their lives?