Why You Should Stop Following Your Ex On Social Media

One of the healthiest things you can do when breaking up is to unfollow your ex on social media. It can cost, it’s true. Sometimes you may not even see it necessary. But doing so facilitates grief and also constitutes an effective therapeutic strategy to be able to turn the page much faster and rebuild your life in a healthy and satisfied way.

Now, why do it if “we have remained as friends” ? Many say. The truth is that, even today, many people still do not understand the impact that maintaining virtual contact can have, even when the affective relationship has ceased to exist. Stalking the ex-partner, understood as that spy behavior on social networks, is a behavior practiced by a good part of the population.

One thing we certainly know is that relationships in the current age are no longer like they were ten or fifteen years ago. Love in digital times implies having more bonds than physical and emotional ones. Virtual ties are the least important when we have a relationship and yet they are our last stronghold when that relationship breaks down.

Reasons why you should stop following your ex on social media

Social media is our peephole to find out what they are doing and how life is going for the people we meet. We live in a temporary moment in which a large part of the population has a mobile phone and access to the Internet and this has revolutionized our lives and our relationships. Now, we can follow someone’s day to day without that person knowing it and this can have serious repercussions.

This advantage makes it possible for us to know what our friends and former friends, co-workers and ex-co-workers, partners and ex-partners are doing. Thus, among all these groups, the most problematic on a psychological level is skipping those people with whom we had a relationship. Being the eye that looks through the virtual keyhole increases discomfort, chronifies duels and can lead us to obsessive behaviors.

These are more reasons why you should unfollow your ex on social media.

Your emotional backpack will weigh much more and you will not be able to move forward

Throughout that relationship you have had with your ex-partner, you have accumulated good experiences and others that are not so good. When a breakup occurs, your emotional backpack has a certain weight. However, the fact of following that person on social networks will increase the emotional charge of negative valence considerably.

That load will rise every day when you discover a new photo, a new comment and the stories in which it appears with other people. The happiness of the other in that virtual universe will mean one more grief in your backpack and in this way the process of mourning after the breakup will never end.

You should stop following your ex on social media. You are reinforcing an impossible

If you cannot stop following your ex on social networks, it is for a very specific fact. You don’t just want to know what he does in his life. Somehow, you also continue to foster hope. You look for signs that make you perceive that he misses you. You long for signs that make you see that that person is seeking a reconciliation with you.

A part of your mind continues to conceive that this break is something temporary and that, at some point, it will return to your side. However, you need to be aware of the evidence. You are feeding an impossible and following that person on social networks makes it impossible for you to turn the page, move forward in your life.

You keep idealizing a person who doesn’t love you

Look at the status of the ex-partner. Be aware of what he publishes, what he comments, know what he likes , if he is online or what photos he uploads. Even if you do not realize it, you are idealizing a person who no longer loves you, you continue to nurture an affection that lacks meaning or purpose.

You will not be able to restart yourself until you definitively cut the link that binds you to that impossible and meaningless love: the virtual one. Mental health is also letting go of what does not make sense and that is also becoming an obsessive behavior that reduces your psychological balance.

Out of sight, out of mind. How to stop following your ex in the virtual world

The problem of maintaining virtual contact after an emotional breakdown has been an issue that has been investigated for quite some time. As early as 2012, for example, the journal  Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking published a study that spoke of the impact that social networks such as Facebook had when it came to making it difficult to grieve in breakups.

Already in those years, the potential of contact and vigilance that this network allowed was highlighted and how it made emotional recovery impossible. From 2012 to the present and with the advancement of platforms such as Instagram or Tik Tok, we have more resources to follow, watch, monitor and thereby chronify suffering.

How to avoid it? How can you unfollow your ex on social media? These would be some keys.

• The manual of good use after a breakup tells us the following: if it is out of your sight on the mobile, it will be out of mind. This should convince you of something very clear. If you want to stop suffering, hit the unfollow .
• Using your statuses or photos as a revenge mechanism only exposes you and is useless. Become aware of it and do it, remove that person from your networks.

• After the breakup, give yourself some time. After unfollowing that person, take a few days of disconnection in the virtual universe.
• Find other hobbies, make new friends. Any new stimulus is a way to keep your mind occupied and to feed it with new interests and goals.

To conclude, few things are healthier and more cathartic than blocking, unfollowing, and silencing. Do whatever it takes to regain balance and control of your life after the breakup.