How to Handle Social Media - Advice Please?

[Family Court Strategies: When Your Partner Has BPD OR NPD Traits.]

Hi, all -

I am pretty new to these forums. I've written a longer thread elsewhere, but in short, my pwBPD (partner of six years) broke up with me via text message eight days ago. We had been on what we had agreed would be a temporary separation for about five weeks. I have been a mess, staying alone at an unoccupied family house, while he is staying with his brother and slowly moving his things out of our apartment.

Only my close family (mother, aunts) and two closest friends know that this is happening. My pwBPD has consistently "performed" wellness in front of others, but the people closest to me know and have seen how out of control he can be since well before his diagnosis last summer.

Something that is complicating the early days of this grief for me is the role of social media. Because my pwBPD and I met in grad school and work in the same field, we have many, many mutual contacts and friends. Only a small percentage of them have any sense of his mental health issues (or at least they have not indicated as such to me). Many of these people are also individuals he would consider friends but since he can't actually maintain relationships, most are people who know him only casually or because I have a good friendship with them.

How do / did you handle the "social media" factor, both in terms of ways in which pictures and archived memories can be painful and triggering but also in terms of whether to "announce" your breakup to your social media community? I realize this is a question completely tied to the era in which we are living, but I haven't even been able to remove the "in a relationship with ____" tag from my profile, yet I am upset every time I see it. I was sitting here wondering if I should delete or hide all the photos of us (hundreds, though interestingly fewer and fewer each year as he went from idolizing me to resenting me), or if I should own my history with this man and therefore not try to "erase" the past.

People are also posting / tagging him in invites and things to me, mentioning summer activities we could all do together, etc. It's a little jarring and upsetting -- do I just privately contact everyone individually?

Any advice greatly appreciated!

[Keepingreal]

Hi, all -

I am pretty new to these forums. I've written a longer thread elsewhere, but in short, my pwBPD (partner of six years) broke up with me via text message eight days ago. We had been on what we had agreed would be a temporary separation for about five weeks. I have been a mess, staying alone at an unoccupied family house, while he is staying with his brother and slowly moving his things out of our apartment.

Only my close family (mother, aunts) and two closest friends know that this is happening. My pwBPD has consistently "performed" wellness in front of others, but the people closest to me know and have seen how out of control he can be since well before his diagnosis last summer.

Something that is complicating the early days of this grief for me is the role of social media. Because my pwBPD and I met in grad school and work in the same field, we have many, many mutual contacts and friends. Only a small percentage of them have any sense of his mental health issues (or at least they have not indicated as such to me). Many of these people are also individuals he would consider friends but since he can't actually maintain relationships, most are people who know him only casually or because I have a good friendship with them.

How do / did you handle the "social media" factor, both in terms of ways in which pictures and archived memories can be painful and triggering but also in terms of whether to "announce" your breakup to your social media community? I realize this is a question completely tied to the era in which we are living, but I haven't even been able to remove the "in a relationship with ____" tag from my profile, yet I am upset every time I see it. I was sitting here wondering if I should delete or hide all the photos of us (hundreds, though interestingly fewer and fewer each year as he went from idolizing me to resenting me), or if I should own my history with this man and therefore not try to "erase" the past.

People are also posting / tagging him in invites and things to me, mentioning summer activities we could all do together, etc. It's a little jarring and upsetting -- do I just privately contact everyone individually?

Any advice greatly appreciated!

[BeagleGirl]

My advice:  Put in your feed that you are taking a one month break from social media to kick off an "analog" summer, or something cute that doesn't make it seem like you are in mourning. THEN DO IT.

For that month people who care to can reach you in person on your phone (the old fashioned way). After a month you will probably be more ready to face the task of making any social media announcement necessary and deciding what to do with pictures, etc.

Think it's possible? 

[Keepingreal]

Eek, that sounds great but challenging!

I am not a huge social media person -- I don't even have a SmartPhone, and some of the courses I teach at my university are on addiction, including addiction to screens / social media. That being said, I have been on Facebook a lot in the last week -- not to beat myself up with photos (so much) but more to reconnect / see photos / laugh at updates from friends, people with whom I've had close relationships, some of which have weakened perceptibly (though not overtly) because of the stress and consumption in my life by my pwBPD.

So... .losing that entirely right now sounds tough, though also attractive... .

[BeagleGirl]

So what if you were to stay on for one week with the exclusive purpose of setting up "analog" connections with these people you are reconnecting with. Get your calendar booked up with coffee and outings, then see how we who are too old AND too young (my mom spends far more time on Facebook than my kids do) for social media live.

[hope2727]

Best idea I have heard of was getting a trusted friend to change your FB password to something you don't know nada then close your account. Then you go cold turkey for 90 days. Once the 90 day is over you can go back you can change your password to something you know and delete all the people you can. If they aren't a close friend cut them. Then you can start fresh with no mutual contacts. I just cut another one the other day. I always ask myself who is this person? Are they really a friend or are they just someone I felt obligated to accept an invitation from?

Ok good luck.

[Keepingreal]

Those are both really interesting ideas, the former being perhaps more do-able than the latter. I guess I should explain that I can't stay off social media for 3 months because some of my summer courses incorporate "closed groups" on FB for discussion.

Which brings me back to my initial question -- without deleting my account, temporarily or permanently:

How do / did you handle the "social media" factor, both in terms of ways in which pictures and archived memories can be painful and triggering but also in terms of whether to "announce" your breakup to your social media community? I realize this is a question completely tied to the era in which we are living, but I haven't even been able to remove the "in a relationship with ____" tag from my profile, yet I am upset every time I see it. I was sitting here wondering if I should delete or hide all the photos of us (hundreds, though interestingly fewer and fewer each year as he went from idolizing me to resenting me), or if I should own my history with this man and therefore not try to "erase" the past.

[Panda39]

Hi Sara,

So you use Facebook for work and personal stuff... .

To me the first thing that needs to happen is that you need to acknowledge the break up by changing your status.  No one knows the relationship has ended so of course people are acting as if you are a couple by tagging you both.

If anyone continues to tag you both after the change in status I would just message them that the relationship has ended and to please include you individually going forward.

In terms of past photos maybe you just hide or delete them as they come up for now since they are triggering to you.  Over time they may become less so and then you can just ignore them later on vs spending tons of time going through them and deleting them.

Panda39

[Grey Kitty]

It sounds like you've got a couple different social media issues.

One is that old pics, and other reminders of your r/s that you are currently on "temporary separation" from are triggering to you. Some of those you can hide. I made my FB relationship status private so nobody could see it. Still haven't changed it, or made it visible. You can unfollow him, even if you don't unfriend him or block him, and I highly recommend it.

Anyhow, in my split, my wife and I stopped posting things together / sharing things about each other, and since we were mostly in different towns, that we weren't in the same place became obvious to people who were interested enough to pay attention.

At first, we were trying to reconcile, and didn't really want to announce a split, then announce getting back together, etc... .Later, I simply didn't want to be "that person" who was pouring out grief and anger from a split on my facebook wall.

Anyhow, I shared the split in various ways--a few people I was close enough to that they were hearing much of the story from me, mostly on the phone instead of social media. A few people noticed something might be happening and said something either in a comment, or in a message that was either questioning what was going on with my r/s, or couldn't be answered without addressing the assumption that "we" were still together. I clarified that we were split privately; usually without a lot of details, and it went gracefully.

ONE person, a relative of my wife, kinda caught that something was going on, but is socially clueless/lacking in emotional intelligence, and kept asking what was going on my FB wall like a dog that won't stop barking up the wrong tree... .One of us eventually told him in private; I forget which of us did it.

Anyhow, a couple questions for you to ponder:

Who do you want to share that you are (temporarily) split with? [My choice: not everybody you know]

If/when you decide the split isn't going to be temporary, you can revisit that question... .

How do you want to share that information with people? [My choice: Private conversations, not social media]