Addicted to looking at my ex online.

[kw1994x]

Hi everyone,

 

I broke up with my ex boyfriend almost 5 months ago now. We were together for almost 2 years. He was the most serious boyfriend i have ever had, things moved pretty quickly, i met him through work and fell head over heels for him. i'd never realised i could love someone as much as i loved him. the beginning was so great, i had to pinch myself because i couldn't believe how lucky i had got with him, but around 4 or 5 months in, his ex messaged me randomly to say that she had only just found out about me and that he had been sleeping with her throughout the whole time we had been together. i cant even begin to describe how much that shattered me and i immediately confronted my boyfriend who insisted it was all lies. He put on a pretty convincing act, even though she sent me screen shots of messages between them which i would deem innapropriate and suggestive as her source of proof and i know now looking back deep down i knew it was true but i wanted to believe him and i was so in love with him i guess i was just blinded by love, so i told him i believed him and we carried on. Things were ok for a few more months, then my parents split up very suddenly and my mum moved out. it was a very upsetting time and it shocked me so much as there was no warning signs or anything. It made me think about my own relationship and it made me feel so awful to the point i would think about his exs accusations even though i dismissed them and then i would feel like he was hiding something. i would confront him and he would tell me i was only thinking it because of my parents, but then i found that he had been lying to me about things and found messages of him with other girls telling them he was single and wanting to meet with them and messaging other exs innapropriately. i was heart broken, but i still didn't want to lose him as i was going through s lot anyway and the last thing i needed was to lose someone i was in love with. from then on i didn't trust him but tried to, which just didn't work. throughout the relationship he woulde treat me badly and make me feel like an idiot for not trusting him, even though he gave me reason not to. in order for it to work out, i said so many times that i wanted a clean slate and i wanted anything that he had lied about or done to be put on the table so we could move on from it, he would get angry and deny there was anything he was hiding, but you know when you just get that gut instinct? it got to the point that he would call me messed up in the head and that i was mentally ill for thinking these things, which sunk me into depression, i was diagnosed with moderate depression and was given tablets and councilling because i thought there was something wrong with me and i was to blame for everything. every day i woke up with the most horrible feeling. Anyway, i felt this way for a year. June 2016, was probably the worst month of my life. life was at a point where my boyfriend thought it would be funny to mess with my feelings by saying things like "yeah i did cheat on you" to "i was lying i haent really you just pissed me off" he would call me every name under the sun, i would constantly seek reassurance from him it was so unhealthy. anyway, it got to a breaking point where we split up for like a day, and within like 30 minutes of breaking up, the first thing he did was try and message a few girls i was already insecure about who i thought hed lied about, flirting wi8th them trying to arrange to meet up. he pleaded that he was just upset and didn't think and said if i gave him one more chance that he would be the "perfet boyfriend" and things would be great and when you are that in love with someone, its like the thing you realloy want to hear. Anyway, he didn't stick to it, still treated me poorly and one night he was supposed to meet me to sort things out, he want on an all night bender in town till 6am, i rang him the next morning and he told me one story and then later on he had forgot what he had told me and told me another story, and i basically found out he had lied about who he was with and where he had been and that he'd basically gone out with a load of girls who he barely knew. So i decided i had enough, and did th hardest thing i ever did and ended it for good. then i found out that some of the things he told me i was messed up in the head about, were actually true so he would rather me believed i had a mental illness than owe me the truth.

Anyway, needless to say the first thing he did was add a load of girls on facebook, start liking all their photos, messaging them whilst trying to beg for me back. i cut contact with him a week later. the relastionship really broke me. i never want to get like that again i really feel scarred from how i felt. i loved him so much and my heart was completely broken.

In the past 5 months i feel i have come a long way, like i used to break down and cry at the thought of him with someone else, but now it doesn't hurt as much. BUT one thing i am struggling with is social media, its became an addiction. At first i blocked him, and would sometimes look at what he was doing on my friends social media, but then i ended up unblocking him and trying to just resist looking but i genuinely cant, its now become in my daily routine faebook allows you to see photos and posts a person has liked which i cant help but look at but i don't know why cause all it is is him liking other girls photos, and ive seen a girl hes been in a relstionship with since on there etc. its not doing me any good, but its not like I'm crying at the girls who i see on there either? its just got to the point that if i don't look for so long, i get a horrible urge to look and it is overwhelming like at the thought of not keeping up to date on what he is doing. why am i doing this after all he put me through its like i loved him so much, and ive done well in the respect of cutting contact, or going to see him as ive done none of that in 5 months, but i just cant help but look on his facebook it feels like some sort of addiction and i feel its stopping me moving completely forward

[Kayley]

I feel ya. My ex and I split a month ago, short term relationship but it was intense & I felt things for him I'd never felt for anyone else before. I often look at his instagram even though it upsets me. I'm working on limiting how many times I do it. So I keep track of how often I do it and try to lower the amount of times I look everyday. I can't expect myself to stop cold turkey so just trying to limit myself until eventually I can. When I feel the urge to look I put my phone down and walk away. Usually I cave later on, if I've looked the same number of times as the day before then I physically don't let myself.

 

Find things to do when you want to look, keep busy. Shoot me a message if you like.

 

I was at 5 times yesterday, twice so far today....hoping not to hit 5! Good luck!

[AvaD21]

Because it was T O X I C. You become addicted. You feel you need them, want to believe them, your self worth depends on them. Toxic relationships are very hard to come out of & even harder to try and stay away from. I get it, most of us have done it, that's the web of social media. If it's something you're doing all the time you may need to resort to drastic action and delete your account for a while. Once your confidence starts to gain momentum & you accept what's done is done & that he's a total pr**k you're better off without, then it won't be an issue

[Wiseman2]

He sounds very immature. How old is he? Go no contact block and delete him from all social media and messaging. You can do much better than this.

[kw1994x]

thank you. its pretty reassuring to know I am not alone in doing this. its become part of my daily routine, i'd say I have looked about 4 times today, I know if I don't look for a long period of time, I get the most horrible anxious feeling in the pit of my stomach, knowing that there might be things I haven't seen even though, his business is none of my business anymore.

that's exactly how I felt with my ex, time doesn't mean anything, I fell for him straight away and I know I have never felt as in love as I did with him. I just thought id grow out of looking, but 5 months on I still am, and I don't want my life to focus around looking at the past, I just want to break free from it.

thank you, good luck to you too. you can do it! x

[kw1994x]

He sounds very immature. How old is he? Go no contact block and delete him from all social media and messaging. You can do much better than this.

 

he is 26 years old, and I am 22. we lived together for a period of time also. I thought he would be mature but obviously not. thank you, it means a lot x

[ThatwasThen]

Its like any addiction, you have to go cold turkey withdrawl and take things one day at a time in your sobriety. By taking another "hit" of him and his social media goings on, you're holding yourself back from moving on and being able to find a good guy that doesn't need the attention of other women to get his self-worth.

 

You know what he's like, you know he's never going to change, you know what he does in his social media so really, if you think about it there is no reason for you to look at what he's doing.

 

Once you accept what you already really know, you will get the strength to block and delete him. When you do that, that is when you'll be able to completely move on and find yourself someone actually worth having.

 

You can take this situation as a valuable life lesson as well wherein you'll not give up your self-respect just because you love someone. When the person you love isn't treating you with value and respect, then you leave after giving them one chance to redeem themselves. If they do the same thing again then you know that its who they are.

 

Good for you for getting out when you finally did.

 

Be strong and start your cold turkey withdrawl from him. He's not a good person so I hope that you quickly rid yourself of his online shinanigans.

[ThatwasThen]

BTW: Don't give into your anxiety when you haven't looked. Get up and do something else that will take you mind off of him and creeping his stuff. Go to the gym for an example. They say if you replace a bad habit with a good one you'll quickly get over the bad one and be better off for being hooked on the good one.