Getting over your ex can be a beast.
We all know the phases of grief. First, you cry, then you rage, then you cry into a tub of ice cream … do a little more raging. Call your best friend … and then, inevitably …
You start stalking them hard on social media.
Don’t feel bad. We all do it.
In fact, for some of us on the bad end of a breakup … checking the ex’s page is the most consistent thing we do all day. Like clockwork, we check it in bed in the morning, after we shower, while eating breakfast, on the subway to work, on our lunch break.
Then when we get home, it’s time for a more in depth investigative approach. We ask the hard questions.
Who’s that? Who’s this? Who’s this person who liked their picture? Where is that restaurant? Why are they there? Who are they with? They don’t like eel! Why are they eating that? Why haven’t they posted in a while?
And if the ex has multiple types of social media? You’ve got those pages bookmarked, baby.
But let’s stop for a second and examine this protocol we’ve created. And let’s ask the important question here, which is:
Do you ultimately want to get over this person?
If the answer is no, well, then you’re lucky because with this routine you probably never will.
But if the answer is yes, how do you think your constant obsession with his social media page is going to play into your goal?
In fact, you can be pretty certain that getting rid of them on social media is going to help things along in the “getting over them” department.
But if you’re still not convinced, here are the top reasons why deleting your ex on social media and completely cutting them out of your “Internet life” is the way to go.
Why You Should Delete Your Ex From Social Media: The Top 8 Reasons
- You get to stop longingly scrolling through his pictures.
How terrible is it to feel so sick to your stomach every time you look at a picture of them? Is this something you actually enjoy doing? Keep in mind that it’s a special kind of self-torture that you could very well avoid if you decided to (you could also enjoy social media again!).
- You get so much more time on your hands!
Hey guess what? When you’re not continually checking your ex’s social media page, you’ll have a heck of a lot more time on your hands to do other things like hang with your friends, make delicious dinners and even date other people.
- You won’t have to feel like a stalker anymore.
Guess what else? When they’re gone from your social media, you get to turn in your stalker license!
No one really likes feeling like a stalker. It’s sort of creepy feeling, right? When you stop constantly living on your ex’s page, you might begin to feel a little better about yourself.
- You can feel like a super standup, confident person who always takes the high road.
It’s hard to be the person who takes the high road when a breakup is happening, but deep down, don’t you want to be that person?
In the end, by getting rid of your ex on social media, you are removing yourself from that heated equation even though everybody knows that deleting them is a hard thing to do. Kinda feels good, huh?
- There’s no way you can get sucked back into dating them anymore.
If you’re worried about somehow falling back into this person’s arms after your break up, the best way to avoid this is to avoid that person in general, and you can’t do this without deleting them from social media.
- You won’t have to go through the excruciating pain of seeing them flirting with or dating someone else.
Someday … yes, someday… your ex is going to meet someone new, and you are going to see their pictures and stupid lovey-dovey messages to each other all over social media. But you can AVOID THIS PAIN … by taking action now.
- You don’t have to put your mutual friends in a tight spot.
Many mutual friends of people who go through breakups have a really hard time dealing with this, especially on the Internet. Don’t put your dear friends through this. Allow them to interact with each of you separately on social media.
- You don’t have to worry about them seeing what you post.
After a breakup, it’s common to curate all of your social media so that your ex thinks this, that and the other about you (usually that you are living a magnificently happy and care-free existence without them). When you can just delete them from your social media platform, you don’t have to worry about this and you can move on with your life without curating it oddly.
To Delete or Hide: That Is the Question
Before we end, let’s go over one more thing. On many social media platforms, you have the choice between deleting someone completely from your friends group, blocking them so that they can’t see anything that you do or just hiding them and their posts from your own view.
There are pros and cons to each one of these options, and it must be said that the problem with immediately deleting your ex is that this might come off as an aggressive move on your part.
Now, you can always talk to them first. For example, send them a message and say “Hey, no hard feelings, but I’m trying to get over this and am hoping you understand that I’m going to be deleting you from social media.”
But if you can’t send a message like this or are super wary of them being mad or sad (perhaps because you were the one who actually broke it off and you don’t want to feel like an even worse person), you can always hide them so that they can see you, but you can’t see them.
In the end, however, it’s best to just cut the ties and delete. It might feel difficult now, but like most big choices, it will only get easier as time goes on. And as you can see from the reasons above, there are plenty of positive outcomes to this choice.
