This is one of the biggest dilemmas after a breakup. Should you unfriend your ex on facebook? The answer is quite simply yes.
If you don’t unfriend your ex from facebook, you are going to end up looking at their profile sooner or later. Their status messages are going to show up on your news feed. And you will be looking at all the pictures they upload. All these things will affect your emotions and your thoughts.
In short, if you don’t unfriend your ex from facebook, your ex still has some control over you. (Note: if you want to get your ex back, you might want to reconsider. If that’s the case. Make sure you read the article on how to get your ex girlfriend back.)
When you read their status messages, your mind will just be wondering whether there is hidden message for you. Your mind will try to decode everything they put on facebook. And it’s not helping you in getting over the breakup. You are consciously putting road blocks in your path to recovery.
And I am not saying that it’s all your fault if you are trying to look for subliminal messages in everything your ex puts up on facebook. A lot of people use facebook to manipulate and play mind games. It’s extremely common.
I knew a girl who was just sitting on facebook all day; posting pictures and updating statuses trying to make her ex miss her and show him how much wonderful her life is. Behind the computer screen, as I was looking at her, her life pretty miserable. If I were to compare her online life and her real life, the difference was comparable to living on the Hawaiian Islands vs. living in a mental asylum.
And don’t fool yourself into thinking only girls do this, boys are as much messed up when it comes to manipulation using facebook.
If you’ve decided to move on and find happiness in life, then facebook is just impeding your progress. Facebook is just a medium for your ex to have some sort of control over your mind and thoughts. And if you want that, then you don’t really want to move on.
If you think about it, it’s not even recommended that you be friends with your ex in real life. Then why in the world would you want to be friends with them on facebook?
Wait, I could think of some reasons (or excuses) that people give themselves for remaining friends with their ex on facebook. Let’s go over them.
It might be rude to unfriend them.
You guys broke up. Do you really think that it matters whether you are rude to them or not? You both have decided to live your lives separately. You don’t owe each other anything. Not even kindness. And if having your mental peace requires you to be rude to your ex, then so be it.
With facebook we have at least some connection
Why do you need this connection? What is this need to hang on to every last piece of string that is attached to your ex? Until you let go of everything that connects to your ex, you will not be able to move on.
I really hope we can be friends in the future
First of all, you shouldn’t be friends with your ex. But if you are really hoping to be friends, even then removing them from your facebook is not something that should bother them. If your ex is truly someone who is worth being friends in the future (when you have completely moved on) then I am sure they will understand that you had to unfriend them for the sake of your mental health. If something as trivial as “unfriending on the internet” offends your ex so much that they don’t want to be friends, then you are far better off not being friends with this person ever.
I want them to regret breaking up with me by showing you how awesome my life is.
“The best revenge is living well.” But how can they know that I am living well unless I post the pictures of my awesome life on facebook. If that’s on your mind, then I think you misunderstood the phrase. The phrase simply means that you shouldn’t concentrate on revenge, but concentrate on living well. If you are concentrating on showing them your awesome life, you are concentrating on revenge, not on your life.
If you were concentrating on your life, you will understand that having the desire to prove something to your ex is just another way of your mind to keep yourself attached to them. That just means that the desire to show them your awesome life is just another face of the same old desire – to not move on. (Need help moving on? Read my 5 Steps Plan To Recover From a Breakup.)
i ve just unfriend my ex wife aftter seeing posts that triggered my emotions.
My soon to be ex husband unfriended me and it broke my heart. He also unfriended my family and my friends. We were determined to stay friends after the divorce but now I’m not so sure. The divorce is already hard to deal with why would you do something so cruel?
Hey,
I don’t think it’s cruel. Don’t think he did it just to hurt you. I think most people do it for themselves and not for their ex. Perhaps he didn’t want to be reminded of you every time he logs in. Perhaps seeing your profile makes him think about you and it hurts him thinking about how things ended. And he unfriended you just to protect himself from getting hurt.
My ex, who was the one to decide to break up, has just unfriended me, 3 months after the break up.. I decided a month ago to use the technique of the No Contact rule so I haven’t been texting him for almost 30 days.. the result is he unfriended me on Facebook.. I mean, why? He was the one who didn’t want me anymore!
I have been doing the NC for 26 days now and I am lil bit afraid my ex won’t contact me.
We broke up because we were arguing a lot and I suggested we should take a break, he said he did not believe in ´taking breaks¨ that’s why when 4 days later he told me he wanted to a take a break, I knew he was actually breaking up.
Although we were only together for 6 months it feels like it was for a much longer time. We talked about the future and he even told me he knew I was the one because he wanted to have a family with me.
He is divorced and have 2 kids and a year before we met he was engaged to someone else. I must confess this freaked me out because things between us were so good and he seemed so in love and secure about us, it made me think maybe he was just in love with love and I started to search and to ask a lot of questions about his past. Mostly I felt insecure about me falling hard for this guy while maybe he was just falling in love with love. I even made him tell me how he proposed to his ex…. (I am not proud of that).
I even broke up with him once, but I manage to get him back, we were fine for a lil while but I feel he is/was resentful for all the digging I did of his past and for the short break up.
It has been a stressful period for us because aside the relationship issues, we were both unemployed. He got a job recently but it was the night shift and that just added more problems to our struggle, because we couldn’t see much of each other. At the end the break up was over the phone…
It has been 26 days of NC, we still have each other on Facebook and I can see him going out with friend and having a blast (the good thing is I know he is hanging out with friends and not a girl) but I am losing hope is going to contact me and I have really no good excuse to do so since he was the one who finally decided that needed time and space. He even downloaded tinder the very same day we broke up (which is speacilly painful since we met over tinder) he said it was only to make friends but he obviously wanted me to have a reaction.
I have kept myself out of reach and have rarely post it anything on fb in order to make myself invisible.
He is an awesome guys and I think I ruined it with my insecurities. At this point I don’t know what to do. I am not sure the NC is working, I know we need time but it doesn’t look like he misses me at all and I can’t really do anything without appearing needy.
He is a very outgoing person, and he is even in a music band and I am scared that he will find someone else and forget about me. Should I just move on? It feels like I cannot fix this.
Any comments?
My ex unfriended me and I think it was rude. He found another girl and disappeared. Two weeks later he unfriended me. I never contacted him so there was no reason for this. It really hurt me, though it was years ago I still remember the feeling. I unfriended only the one who was rude to me when being together. Yes, it matters how you behave with your ex. (Why would you be rude to anybody, to begin with?) If being friends hurt you, you can at least message them when unfriending them. I did.