Today, the expression «leaving, leaving» implies that you are also leaving the virtual space, where you can still encounter your ex. If you constantly follow his life, which means that you return to parting with your thoughts again and again, you risk aggravating your condition, says our heroine Olga B. Social networks only make it difficult to accept the gap and let go of the past.
My husband became an ex two months ago. After our parting, starting the day with his Facebook (an extremist organization banned in Russia) and Instagram (an extremist organization banned in Russia) has become a bad habit for me. Even then I understood that I was only torturing myself, but I could not help myself.
Looking at his new and old photographs, reading short sketches about life already without me, I again and again plunged into painful memories. I’m sure many of you know this feeling. If you do not find the strength to leave the online page of a once loved one, perhaps my advice will help you.
Be honest with yourself. No need to be deceived, to pretend that daily surfing on its social pages is just an idle curiosity. Analyze in what situations you open his account. Most likely, you are hardly interested in him when you are very busy and solve important tasks that require concentration of strength and attention.
The account of the former becomes interesting at the moment when you are tired, you are sad, you feel sorry for yourself and the future is seen in a black light. I’m sure you’ll agree that it doesn’t do you any good.
And the next time you have an obsessive desire to open his page (and it, of course, will appear), ask yourself: “What am I looking for there?” The answer is obvious. You want to know how he lives. And do not stop until you find something that will make you jealous, suffer, and, as it often ended with me, open a bottle of wine and fall asleep in tears.
Even if you just remembered the past with nostalgia, do not forget that this is just a virtual world and it has nothing to do with your real life. Once you decided to leave, there were reasons for this, and no pictures on Facebook (an extremist organization banned in Russia) or messages in the messenger will change them.
The most effective way to deal with addiction is to simply block the person. Fully. In all social networks
In the end, I admitted to myself that virtual encounters with this person bring me pain. The only way not to look at his pages when I feel bad is to keep myself busy as much as possible.
In the evenings, I forced myself to close my laptop and played with my daughter. If she was already asleep, she turned on a movie that she had long wanted to watch. Over the weekend, I finally took up what I loved in my youth — painting. Breathing meditation also helped.
But the most effective way to deal with addiction is to simply block the person. Fully. In all social networks. In the end, I decided on it. Perhaps someday you will calmly recall the past, but for now, give yourself time.
“If a person was significant to us, it’s not so easy to reset the relationship at the touch of a button”
Tatyana Mizinova, psychoanalyst
The principle of “going away, go away” could be made the standard of parting, but, unfortunately, in reality everything turns out to be much more complicated. Living in the modern world, we have long been entangled in the web of social networks and instant messengers.
Ten or fifteen years ago, everything was much simpler. We broke up, stopped communicating, and if by chance we crossed paths or met, then we just go to the other side of the road or do not notice the former partner at the party.
Today we are all connected by virtual reality. The decision to “delete from everywhere” is most often impulsive. This is a small symbolic murder — «you are no longer in my life.» But is it? If a person was significant to us, influenced us, it is not so easy to reset the relationship by pressing the “block” button.
We only add to our worries and maintain addiction, because we are not ready to accept what happened.
However, this will be an important step in coping with grief. Accepting a breakup takes time.
The heroine accurately describes in what situations we cannot overcome the desire to look at the pages of the former: “You are tired, you are sad, you feel sorry for yourself and the future is seen in a black light.” We want to see that even a loved one is not sweet without us. What if it’s not? Then we only add to ourselves reasons for worrying and reinforce the addiction, because we are not ready to accept what happened.
Why do we go to the pages of the former? We want to regain positive emotions, we believe that only with him we were happy. And we lose faith that life will still give us a chance for happiness.
If it’s hard for you to decide on a complete break, there is an option on social networks when you don’t see a person, but everything that happens in your feed is visible to him. Let this be the first step towards a virtual breakup. In any case, until you begin to more soberly assess what happened.