Unfriending My Ex: And Other Things I'll Never Do (16 page)

Given that it’s never over and the long list of ex-crushes, flings, and serious relationships is always just a click away, we must practice self-control. But sometimes we can’t help ourselves. My own ability to get over and move on from relationships has been slowed by the fact that these social networking tools keep the images and details of these people in my mind. As a friend admitted to me, “I would be able to move on from my past relationship more easily if it weren’t for Facebook. I can see what my ex-boyfriend is up to in a way that I otherwise would not. I can see his day-to-day activities. It’s addictive and it sucks.”

The constant access to potential, current, and even past lovers in various ways can spur certain hopes within us.
Anything can trigger our impulses to attempt a reunion. My friend Jesse started dating Nikki at the beginning of one summer, and by the next, they were living together and quite serious but going through a bickering stage. One evening when we were hanging out, Jesse told me he missed the simplicity of single life and that he felt emotionally drained by his relationship. I told him this feeling was not uncommon in relationships and that he should push through it, especially if he loved Nikki. His patience was clearly waning, however, and one night after work when Nikki had a late dinner meeting, he found himself on his ex-girlfriend’s Facebook page, looking at her recent photos, wall posts, and status updates. On the news feed, he noticed a fateful update from the week before: “Gabrielle is now Single.” The spark of interest, along with the revelation (thanks to a recent “Summer Fun” photo album—I have yet to see a “Summer Fun” album that isn’t asking for an ex to see it and get jealous) that Gabrielle had a new attractive haircut, was enough to ignite a fantasy about what Jesse’s life would have been like had he not broken up with Gabrielle or ever met Nikki. I had always considered Jesse an uncomplicated guy who would not be caught obsessing over any girl, so it surprised me when he told me that over the next couple of weeks he spent between thirty minutes and an hour each day poring over Gabrielle’s Facebook profile, checking her updates and posts obsessively to see if any of them included new men.

One night, after an argument with Nikki, Jesse decided to write Gabrielle a Facebook message. Gabrielle responded,
and one message turned into two, which turned into approximately seven or eight back-and-forths every day for several weeks, at which point Jesse came to me in a panic. He was completely surprised by how quickly his online reunion with Gabrielle had progressed and realized he would have to break up with Nikki if he was going to let it advance any farther without completely going against his conscience and values.

Whether Jesse was already cheating at that point is up for debate; nevertheless, it had taken just one click of the mouse to get in touch with Gabrielle—one click that helped escalate Jesse’s feelings. He broke up with Nikki and told her that he just needed some time to be alone and that he was not mentally ready to take their relationship to the next level—not 100 percent true reasoning, which was soon publicly exposed when Gabrielle posted photos from the first night she and Jesse finally hung out. Nikki, of course, had friended Gabrielle early on in her relationship with Jesse (she figured,
I must friend Jesse’s ex! Keep my enemies closer . . .
). Jesse was not aware of their Facebook friendship and Gabrielle had forgotten about it or didn’t care. Nikki was crushed and Jesse found his clothes (which he had been meaning to pick up) outside his old apartment the next day.

But the twisted game of social media wasn’t over. It wasn’t until a few weeks later, when Jesse found out that Gabrielle had actually gotten back together with her boyfriend—but had neglected to let him know or update her Facebook status—that he realized how much he had allowed
himself to get carried away. Jesse’s obsession and imagined life based on what he saw on Gabrielle’s Facebook profile had led him to believe their connection was much stronger than it actually was. It’s easy to forget, but we actually
do
have a choice about what we post, and Gabrielle’s editorial decisions had fooled Jesse. In reality, she had been seeing her ex-boyfriend and had decided to get back together with him. She may have been using Jesse to make her boyfriend jealous; no matter what, Jesse lost this game of Facebook Fantasy.

Some lawyers are calling Facebook the “marriage killer.” Mark Keenan of the UK-based website
Divorce-Online.com
, which allows men and women to file uncontested divorces, scanned the documents filed on his site and found that 989 of the company’s 5,000 most recent divorce petitions contained the word “Facebook.” Upon further exploration, he found that Facebook had actually been a stated factor in approximately one in five divorces filed on his site. Back on these shores,
the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers announced that 81 percent of its members had seen an increase in cases using evidence from social media sites over the past five years.
The same study found that Facebook is the unrivaled leader in providing online divorce evidence, with 66 percent “citing it as a primary source.”

The Internet isn’t only dangling the temptation of new relationships, it’s also stoking doubt and suspicion in our existing ones. Even when we’re in happy, functional relationships, almost all of us check up on our significant other via e-mail, Facebook, or Instagram at least once. I talked
to a few people who even admitted to hacking into their significant other’s account more than three times a day. One person told me that when she found out her boyfriend’s password, she checked obsessively. All day, every day. “It was as if I couldn’t help myself,” she said. “One day I sat down in my dining room and read every e-mail he had sent or received over the past two years.” Another person told me, “I regret doing it every time—and will probably do it again tonight!”

In her online column on the
Psychology Today
website, Dr. Pamela Haag details a study called “More Information Than You Ever Wanted,” which demonstrates that Facebook and other social media sites “enhance jealousy” in relationships. Essentially, the site keeps us in a “romantic jealousy feedback loop.” On Facebook, partners are privy to information they might not have previously discovered, which has the potential to incite jealousy. The jealousy then leads to more significant surveillance, which can expose even more jealousy-inducing fare. Dr. Haag mentioned that some consider Facebook surveillance to be addiction as well. The people who admitted to me that they have hacked into their significant other’s account or looked through their phones aren’t crazy. Relationships put our hearts on the line, and the possibility that we can either confirm our fears or rid ourselves of worry by simply clicking a mouse or unlocking a phone proves irresistible for most of us.

My friend Colin had an interesting experience with snooping while on a break with his longtime girlfriend Donna. Colin and Donna had been dating on and off (and
by “on and off” I mean that they broke up and got back together at least thirty times in three years). During one of their breaks, Colin signed on to Match.com. He figured now was as good a time as any. He needed a clean slate and Match.com seemed like the safest way to get it. One day, Colin was “winked” at by a girl who in her photo bore an extremely close resemblance to his ex Donna (the photo was a little blurry but tall, brown hair, and skinny were enough to spark his interest).
Great
, he thought,
just my type (in looks anyway!)
. He winked back. He signed on a few days later to see if this hot Donna look-alike had made the next move. Indeed she had. The girl had written him a message. Excited, he opened it up to find just two words: “Fuck You.” Turned out Donna had discovered perhaps a new and somewhat nuanced way to stalk one’s exes, via a dating site. Sadly for Colin, Donna not only flicked him off via Match message, but she screenshotted his profile and sent it with a scathing message about him to everyone they knew. One of their main reasons for breaking up in the first place was a lack of trust, and now Colin’s attempt at safe and anonymous dating had become dangerous as well. He closed his Match.com account the next day.

The fact is, even if two people fundamentally trust, love, and care for each other, the little machines that bind us together and provide us with so much information and access have made us more suspicious, controlling, and easy to manipulate—and that can be immensely damaging to any relationship. I have been on both sides of the fence—obsessing over details on a girlfriend’s Facebook page as
well as feeling like my social media accounts were under constant surveillance. There were times when I allowed my imagination, insecurity, and paranoia to take over my (not always incorrect) thoughts. The use of text and other smartphone technologies like WhatsApp and Snapchat can cause increased suspicion and irrational thoughts because they make secret messaging easy. We wonder why our friends and significant others are reading our notes but not writing back, or why our messages aren’t getting through. I can remember the times when I’ve said good night to a girlfriend before she went to sleep, then sent a quick “I love you!” and watched as the message didn’t go through. Paranoia abounds:
Who could she be talking to? Who would her last phone call of the night be to—if not me? Am I being cheated on?
These feelings and questions, while irrational, are altogether common.

On the other hand, being monitored is no walk in the park. When I was with Brenda, I felt so closely watched that I felt the urge to delete even the most innocent of texts and e-mails. They just weren’t worth the discussion. My urge to delete so as not to discuss was actually one of the worst ideas I ever had—because one day, my texts to a friend didn’t quite line up. Brenda could tell I had deleted something and even though I was truly doing nothing wrong and had just deleted a selfie my friend had taken to show me her new dress, I looked like a criminal. Four hours of fighting and convincing later, I realized I should have just kept the texts there. No one likes a deleter. So truly, on both sides of the coin, it’s not a fun game. You feel
either suffocated and monitored or jealous and panicked. Without social media and smartphones, instead of dealing with those terrible feelings, you might just be watching old episodes of
Twin Peaks
together (or
The X Factor
or
Modern Family
if you aren’t still rewatching a David Lynch show from 1990 like me).

In a way, social media has made us all snoops—suspicious because we’re all aware that the potential for cheating is just a click away. Knowing how easy it is to find out about another’s deception by checking social media profiles, text histories, and e-mail logs can breed a very real compulsion. But it doesn’t feel good to snoop. Best-case scenario, you learn that your
boyfriend or girlfriend’s slate is clean—but the suspicion still doesn’t subside. And because we feel compelled to keep checking, it’s creating a whole new way to cheat, even if our partner isn’t. The fact of the matter is that even if nothing is found, the simple transgression can ruin a relationship. A good friend once told me, “I have been the victim of the dreaded hack-in. I left my e-mail up once and my girlfriend went through everything and questioned me about over sixty e-mails. Even though there weren’t any instances of infidelity [on my part], the complete lack of trust and invasion of privacy caused our relationship to be tainted and ultimately end.”

Knowing that temptation abounds can also make us—or our partners—hungry for more control in our relationships, which can be just as detrimental.
An MTV initiative called A Thin Line, which is aimed at preventing digital abuse, found that more than one in ten people have had a boyfriend or girlfriend demand passwords, and more than one in ten people have also had a significant other demand that they unfriend or unfollow an ex on a social networking site like Facebook or Twitter. Sometimes, people will even force each other to “friend” an ex so that the ex can see the person happy and joyful in a new relationship. It’s backward but it happens. The quest for transparency in our relationships can be suffocating.

Carly, one of my most mature and levelheaded friends, had a breakdown because of Find My Friends, an app that, according to the site, lets those who are connected see where their friends are located geographically. Carly and her boyfriend had been in a long-distance relationship for five years, and they found that each knowing where the other was and being able to picture each other at work, the store, or the gym made them feel closer in a way. Over time, however, Carly found herself becoming less rational when it came to the location obsession Find My Friends had ignited in her. She said, “I found myself using it several times throughout the day to casually check and see what Aaron was doing . . . One night, we got into a silly fight and ended up not speaking the next day. Unbeknownst to him, I followed him all day via Find My Friends to see what he was up to: office, doctor, meetings, etc. By the afternoon, I was pretty upset that he had not tried to contact me. I figured he was busy and would text me when he got home. I checked the app around seven
P.M
. and saw that he was at a hockey game. I texted him saying, ‘Happy to see you care more about a sports team than you do about my feelings.’ I text-screamed at
him until I eventually saw (through Find My Friends) that he had left the game and gone home before the first period had even ended.” Aaron broke up with Carly a few months later because he felt she had changed and that her recent tendencies to be “crazy” and “controlling” had ruined their relationship. I was upset to hear this but not surprised; the digiverse has left a pile of relationship rubble in its wake, breaking up even those couples that had previously seemed quite solid. Carly had been pretty normal before social media, but Find My Friends had turned her into a crazy and suffocating girlfriend. Like the BlackBerry Messenger and iPhone read receipt notifications—and most of the access we get through social media sites—the app provided too much information and planted seeds of doubt where there needn’t have been doubt.