2 months in full block/NC

[caughtnreleased]

2 months in having blocked him from EVERYTHING (which BTW he had slowly encroached into all my social media accounts over the past year and since I considered it a "thawing" of relations initiated by me I went along with it, but since he had to go and do what he can't help himself from doing (discard) I decided it was the last time he would get the chance to do it. I wiped my accounts completely clean of him. And frankly I feel fantastic. No more wondering if that thing on that social media site means this or that, or if his feelings will be hurt if I post this or that, or whatever... .I feel completely liberated.

I would like to say that if you think you are NC but are still connected via social media, you are not NC. No contact is not  just no seeing eachother, talking, phoning. It extends all the way to every single social media site you are active on. I now realize he was monitoring me on these. Through stuff he saw on social media I think he thought I had moved away and therefore had a feeling of abandonment (weirdly he is with a replacement right now), he reached out and when it took my a long (long) time to respond -  we are very low contact and I was out of the country - he went for the really blatantly mean discard when I finally got in touch. And that's when he ran out of discard cards with me. I'd had enough.

Here's the kicker - I had not checked any of his profiles for at least a year. But I could feel that I was being watched by him (also his activity showed that he was).

And frankly, it feels like a weight has been lifted now that I know I am not being monitored and have to watch what I do so I don't trigger him... .Phew!

Social media can be poisonous. We need to be aware of it. Even unfollowing isn't enough because it's possible on their end they are still fully enmeshed, and that never turns out well.

If you want to heal, take a good look at your social media and how that likely keeps pulling you back in. It certainly did for me, many, many, many times. It definitely slowed down my recovery from him, probably by a factor of years.

[roberto516]

Thanks for your own experiences. The one blessing, among many, that I have taken from this is I don't even go on social media anymore. I do have her blocked (no clue if she blocked me as well) but one day a mutual friend posted a picture with her and it set me off. So I did it to start as a way just to have her our of sight and out of mind. Now, months later, I feel more calm. Social media can be very depressing as it is when you see people on vacations, with family, buying this or that, doing this on the weekend, etc. What they don't show is the real them. So to not even see that stuff anymore is liberating. And, in a way, it has stopped certain narcissistic traits in myself. I don't need "likes". I don't need praise or comments when I share what I'm doing with my life. I do what I'm doing because it's what I want to do. When I went on vacation almost 3 months ago I didn't even share one picture on facebook. It was a vacation for myself, not to do it and then show the world how much fun I was having.

Sorry for the rant, but I do agree. Social media in general is no good. Especially when trying to heal. I think it's easy after a breakup to shower social media with things you are doing and fun you are having but deep down maybe it's a way to have word get back to the ex that you are doing well. I know I could see myself doing it. So would I really be healing.

Interesting post. Thanks for making me do some thinking.

[caughtnreleased]

Glad to help. I think i wantes to point out that social media can be so insideous that we aren't even aware that we are being impacted. While i had little communication with him at the back of my mind communication channels were still open because i knew he was checking my stuff. And one could say that if i wasnt checking then its one sided but its not. It's almost like i secretly liked having him as an audience. Not healthy for either of us. I did have to visit some of his profiles when i went to do the block and saw he had mirrored many of my posts (he is also still with replacement) which i read as a way of baiting me back in so he can again discard so i was glad i hadnt been following that and avaides the mind games. All that to say i feel really good about this full on block because it feels like the right thing for both of us.