In the aftermath of a break-up there is often a weird tendency to emotionally torture yourself, especially if you were the one who was, well... dumped. In the good old days, this kind of torture would peak with a night spent sobbing over the six photographs of you together, or perhaps with a bit of drunken dialling after too many 2-4-1 mojitos at your local dive-bar-wine-bar. Because even though you might have spent literally whole days wondering what your ex was up to, you weren't likely to actually find out. How could you?
Now, if you’re a social media addict (and even if your levels of social media use are completley average), and so is he, you can find out what your ex is doing instantaneously. Their regular updates on Facebook and Twitter can be too tempting to ignore. Of course, with Instagram you can torture yourself with pictures as well as words. And what do pictures do? Well, they speak a thousand words and usually those words are 'I AM SO OVER YOU' over and over again.
Trust me, I've been there. My ex innocently mentioning his 'new girl' in a tweet recenly sent me in to inevitable but bonkers background checks on her - as if I was in some form of social media Olivia Pope. You know the routine. You click through to her profile, then on to her friends, her work collegues, and her family. Desperately hunting for signs of how long it had been going on, and for pictures of her in an unfortunate disposition. And then you feel awful, like a weird stalker, whose been entirely unsisterly.
Is it healthy? Well, no. Definitely not. In fact, this sort of sneaky social media will only make things harder in the long run. But is it natural. Entirely. So speaking from experience I’ve rounded up some essential steps to help you get over your over-sharing ex…