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I am still friends with my exBPDGF on facebook (I told her I was taking a break to lose my emotions and be able to be friends again. I told her I didn't know how long that would be. She said she understood. A week later she announced on facebook she was in a new relationship. Me taking a break was probably a relief for her). I started obsessively looking for information about her new relationship from her and her FB friends. It was causing me to hang on and I decided to stop checking. But I still have her set to notify me if there are any new updates from her. She doesn't post that much so I was not looking for a couple days and that was good. I was feeling better. But then today there are a couple updates notified to me, so I have the choice of looking at facebook to see or ignoring it. I resisted for a couple minutes but my heart was racing not knowing what the updates were, so I checked. It was just some innocuous stuff that had nothing to do with anything I cared about, but just being back on her page cause my heart pounding and me losing my sense of what I was doing before.

So it is obvious that this is bad. That I should unfollow her and not have any updates notified to me. I think I will do that. But I can't push myself to unfriend her or to pretend that I won't occassionally look on her page, possibly on my friends account to see if she blocked me from any updates.

I don't know why I can't do this. It's always there in some form or another, and I can just go check in and see what's new. Even though I know it will cause me pain, and even that the relationship I want back will cause me pain, I can't walk away from it mentally by blocking her from facebook or vowing to not look until I've moved on.

I can't figure out why. Every step I've made so far that was painful to do as far as detaching has turned out to be very good for me in hindsight, and I know on some level blocking her would help as well, but I just can't take that step. I think my brain simply can't accept that what we had is truly over. And so total detachment doesn't make sense to it.

You are not alone my friend.  I can't seem to accept it either.  A part of me had pinned all my hopes and dreams of the "perfect" relationship and life with her.  At one point I saw myself growing old with her, walking through life with her by my side hand in hand.  Losing her, or that person I had come to believe her to be, has devastated me more than I care to admit.  I know, at least for me, the chances of finding that again are slim at best.  It is something I may never fully recover from.   :'(

My advice would be to unfollow her, so that none of her updates will pop up in your feed unexpectedly, but stay friends. You can still go stalk her profile whenever you are curious and prepared to do so.

hey homefree 

i had a similar problem; similar motivations, similar thoughts, similar reactions. it was a bit masochistic and it helped me to see it that way. at some point i refused to treat myself that way.

i agree with hashtag_loyal. unfollow her. you dont have to unfriend her or block her. next, remind yourself that breaking the urge to give into this impulse takes a bit of practice and a leap of faith. trust that if you can make it a day, you can make it a week. if you can make it a week you can make it a month. you will find that it gets much easier with time, the nagging impulse to check begins to fade and youll feel greater self respect replace that urge.

you can check whenever you want. but doing so, knowing that it will cause you pain, will eventually sink in as irrational. you will refuse to treat yourself that way when you are ready.

Thanks for the posts. It helps a lot.

I managed to force myself to change things so that I'm not following her or her sister. That should get rid of the update messages, which I clearly can't deal with.

Now I need to force myself to resist the urge to look her up. That will be easier, I think, but who knows.

I need to see the resistance of looking as a sign of growing self-respect, I suppose. I never thought of myself as masochistic, but that seems to be what this behavior is.

I need to realize that it is not worth it. I sat at work and stared at the wall for almost an hour because all I could do was think on and on about her. I was doing well before the facebook thing. Hell, yesterday was the best day I've had since NC 2 weeks ago. To feel that touch of helplessness again today, it's another lesson on what I can't do if I want to get through this. No Facebook. It only hurts me. I can't even imagine the impact if it was something like pictures of her with her new guy. I probably wouldn't even be able to type this.

Giant landmine. I will try very hard not to stick my hand in that fire again. If there is a God, please give me strength.

Work on yourself friend. I can assure you it does get easier. At the moment its all about your recovery, and if that means unfriending her on FB then so be it. There may come a time when you are healthy enough to become FB friends with her, but perhaps what you need is complete detachment. I have been where you are and it wasn't until she was totally out of my life that I was able to take a step forward. I am 15 months out now, and although still think of her often, she is becoming a fading memory. She meant the world to me, but now I recognise clearly that our relationship was not right.

Try and stay busy, make new friends. Vent on here should you need to.

staying away from FB became a test of will for me. at the beginning after starting NC i couldn't help it and would constantly check it, it was so damaging. i would spend the whole day thinking about whatever pointless thing my BPDxg had posted, the reasons behind it, getting paranoid on how she was manipulating me by posting stuff... .etc... etc... .now my logic is this: do i want to delve on what she does or doesn't do? no, i don't. do i want to be as far away as possible from that toxic woman? yes. so there goes FB and all the other channels of potential connection... .it may sound silly, but i actually feel proud! i think it means i'm slowly losing interest on her. and getting over all this mess.   

your psyche is in great pain. it is struggling to process a major shock to your system. when i say "masochistic", what i mean is that the very urge to check the facebook is a means of trying to soothe that pain, by triggering it. its not easy to see and typically not a conscious thought process, but when we see it, it can become easier to manage. to me, it felt like i was experiencing a sudden death, yet she walked, and i could see her activity and it felt incredibly surreal. i was deep in grief and this concept simply was not one that i could process. i believe it only compounded,  confused, and lengthened my grief.

hang in there, homefree; i promise it does get better   

I was the same way with my ex's instagram (she's not on facebook, thankfully). At first I deleted it from my phone for the first few weeks. Then I put it back on my phone and instantly checked her account, even tho my brain told me not to. I then deleted it again and then later put it back on my phone.

long story short - i last checked it a week ago sunday. since then i've been very good about not checking yet still using Instagram. Not checking and still using it makes me feel like i'm taking my power back.

it gets easier each day. you can do it. and don't beat yourself up for checking her facebook.

This is a fascinating idea, to soothe the pain by triggering it. By still feeling like I'm connected on some level, even though it causes me pain, might be better in my mind than not connected at all, and feeling less?

Maybe by not looking I feel like I'm actively walking away, which hurts?

I feel like if I understood the need to look, I would be better able to control it. Right now it's just a matter of will. And so far, so good.

I want to know and don't want to know.