Please don’t tell me what my ex is doing

Bye means bye


It’s an age-old story: boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, boy and girl break up, boy tells girl he’d “marry her if the time was right,” girl’s best friend sends her screenshot of boy’s new Facebook relationship status. Girl chokes on granola bar. Girl still tastes betrayal in those rolled oats, nuts and honey.

Hearts are the worst organ to break.

So there I was, sitting on my bed trying not to choke to death while wailing and crying more tears than when George drew ‘007’ on Meredith’s hand. How could he do this? How could he tell me he loved me and then a week later be with someone else? The cause for our breakup was now painstakingly obvious. It wasn’t that the timing was off — he’d met someone else.

I was devastated beyond words, but since I was raised by Sporty, Posh, Baby, Scary and Ginger, I wasn’t going to let a scumbag continue to hurt me. It was time for him to go, forever. It was time for a cleansing.

I grabbed my phone (which surprisingly did not thrown at the wall) and deleted his digital footprint from my digital heart. Every single photo of him deleted, along with his number and messages.

Next came the fun part! Facebook (boy, bye), Instagram (boy, bye), Twitter (boy, bye), and the real clincher LinkedIn (boy-let me Google how to disconnect you-bye).

It’s time to go…scumbag

That felt good, but it wasn’t enough. There needed to be a social media cya to his mom (whom I really loved), his family and his friends. They might have been nice, but they were connected to him and recovery often means full disconnection.

With no unwanted images of the new happy couple attacking me from my screen, I was making progress! Namely, sweating the pain out in the gym, cutting back on the shower floor cries, and hitting the town.

It’s been three years now and I can proudly say I’ve never been tempted to stalk his Facebook. I loved him once but he proved to not deserve this love. He became the greatest cliché of 2011; somebody that I used to know. I have no idea where he lives, where he works, or what his thoughts are on Lemonade and its impact on race relations. And I don’t want to.

So when my friend turned around the other day and said she “had to tell me something” about him I stopped her mid-sentence. Whatever it was I didn’t want to know. I didn’t care to know.

For the next fews days I couldn’t shake the feeling of being a little pissed. Why did she think to tell me — especially in my hungover state? She knew I had chosen the path of complete disconnect, so why’d she think I should, or would want, to know this mysterious news. Speaking to another friend a few days later she’d told me she’d advised my friend against bringing it up. I couldn’t help but speculate and, after a few wasted minutes, decided that whatever it was I didn’t want or need to know. And guess what? Life continued — fabulously.

If you ever come into “information” about your friend’s ex, just Men in Black yourself and erase if from your memory. No one needs to know if their ex is engaged, married, a parent or finally come out as gay.

So instead of wasting hours pining through his photos I moved cities and got a baller new job. Instead of getting friends to Insta-stalk the “new woman,” I spent five months traveling through Central and South America. Instead of curating my social posts to try to show him “what he’s missing” I moved overseas. I moved on. You can’t hold on to something that’s no longer yours.

Going cold turkey on his ass gives you the upper hand and secures your position as a badass bitch who dgaf. And if he’s anything like my ex you’ll get the yearly LinkedIn notifications that he’s viewed your profile.