EXES AND MOVING ON
Can Stalking Your Ex Help You Move On?
Breakups can be tough for a lot of people, and for those who still aren’t quite ready to move on, questionable coping mechanisms can be very tempting.
Some of the popular ones may even be familiar to you: looking for rebound relationships, hitting the bottle, and the seemingly harmless but highly addictive practice of stalking your ex online.
After all, there’s no real danger in clicking a few buttons and scrolling through a couple of photos. So you’re curious. What about it? You’re not hurting anyone.
In fact, other people may even go so far as to defend this behavior as actually useful in the process of moving on. If you’re no longer wondering what your ex is doing, you can stop obsessing about them, right? If you can just satisfy your curiosity, you’re finally gonna get that closure you need to start healing.
But is there really merit to this kind of mindset? Will stalking your ex to check if they’re dating someone new or still thinking about you actually give you peace of mind?
Or is it nothing but a trap that will just keep you miserable?
Expectation: The Illusion of Closure
One of the most common justifications for stalking your ex online is usually about getting some kind of closure.
At least, that’s what you say to the people who judge you for going through your ex’s Instagram stories every day or for repeatedly checking their list of new Facebook friends.
And to yourself, you say you win either way.
Because if your ex has moved on, and they look happy in their photos with friends and maybe someone new, then you get confirmation that you really need to move on yourself. It’ll be the signal you’re waiting for to finally accept the truth.
You tell yourself you just need that one last nail in the coffin before you can convince yourself it’s time to walk away.
And if the opposite is true, if your ex is still devastated about your breakup, that can mean they made a mistake, right? If they still keep subtweeting you or sharing posts about heartache and regret, that means they’re still not over you.
And maybe, just maybe, there’s still a chance, no matter how small, that you can give your relationship another try.
Reality: A Bottomless Pit of Despair
The problem with this so-called win-win situation that stalking your ex gives you is that it’s hiding the real issue at hand: you’re doing the opposite of moving on.
“Moving on”, by definition, is the process of leaving one place to go to another. In this case, by leaving your old relationship and your former lover to hopefully find better things and better people in your life.
But if you’re stalking your ex and letting whatever they’re doing with their life dictate what you do with yours, you’re only keeping yourself leashed to the past. You’re not going anywhere at all.
It’s most likely a never-ending process, too. One Instagram story becomes two, then the whole slideshow, and the next thing you know, you’re looking through the comments of their most recent photos.
Being fixated on your ex’s online activity also makes you vulnerable to comparison. Did your ex already change their relationship status? Is their new lover hotter than you? Do they look happier than when you were together?
Years down the line, when you find that you’re still alone and unhappy and still anticipating your ex’s new post or shared video, you’ll realize stalking your ex isn’t harmless at all.
And the person you’ve been hurting the most? Why, yourself, of course.
