Why Follow Friends on Social Media? Where does the interest in “ex” come from? How to stop following the life of an ex-boyfriend
The girl writes that she follows the life of the ex and asks how to stop following the life of the ex-boyfriend. There are rules that women all over the world follow, voluntarily or not. If not willingly, it turns out for a long time and with suffering. But if you follow the rules intentionally, then the question "How to stop following the life of an ex-boyfriend?" disappears by itself.
I follow the life of the former.
The former stands before your eyes? This is fantasy. You add to the real past the dream of what that past could have been. Hope is added to the desire to see him “Only with him happiness is possible! Without it, it hurts."
But pain is often subjective. Remember the kids on the playground. One hurt his knee and whimpers. Another rubbed the bruised place and ran on. It's funny that it can be the same child - he was yesterday and he is today.
Breakups are NOT always painful. In a year you will remember and it will be easier for you. And now it's hard. What to do?
How to stop following the life of an ex-boyfriend.
1. Distract: friends, work, hobbies, books, movies and music. Just be in the present moment. Don't let your mind wander in fantasies about him. Watch a movie, watch a movie.
2. Your fantasies are only yours. How much they annoy you is up to you. Ask yourself “What exactly do I want to get from him right now?”. And give it to yourself! Want sex? Find it for yourself. Do you want romance? Organize. If you want hugs, hug. Take yourself to the movies, finally. Here's a good movie:
3. Naturally! And definitely! delete it from your social networks. Cut the whole tail - once it hurts and that's it. If you cut into pieces, it will hurt more. Or do you want to get hurt?
4. Limit the time of suffering. Suffer according to plan. A week from seven to eight. You can't miss. Cry on schedule. Stick to the schedule.
I follow the life of the former.
The persistent need to check his profile on the network is just a desire not to end the relationship. While you're peeping, you feel like you belong.
The other side is the need to compare. You are comparing yourself to the girls that might be in his life right now. “Am I good enough for someone like him” You seem to think that by discovering the secret of his current girlfriend and applying it to yourself, you can get a chance at a re-relationship with an ex-boyfriend. And then you turn your life into an arms race. And the measure of success here is the conquest of the former. Remove him and her from the mythical pedestal.
Painful experiences after a breakup can lead to vengeful desires. I want to make sure that he is bad without you. The female imagination tends to see this “bad” even behind a happy selfie of the former against the backdrop of the sea. Not only do you accumulate aggression in yourself, but you also attribute your suffering to him: “Does he suffer like me?”
Do you want to make sure that you were not a passing episode in his life? Realize the connection: you feel your value through the positive evaluation of the other. Important: the assessment of the situation depends on the comparison you make. Resentment and everything you feel depends less on the action itself than on who does it and in what context. If you are offended by a sworn enemy, you just shrug your shoulders: "What else could you expect." If I am offended by someone whom I considered myself betrayed, then I compare this with a list of how friends should act. Then it hurts me.
You need to accept that a) you are no longer friends b) he lives his normal life. And his photos are not intended to infringe on you. Allow yourself to look at his photographs just to hasten the realization: he is no longer mine. Do not idealize: remember not good and happy moments, but the reasons why you broke up. A person is not free over the feelings that he experiences. But having realized the feelings, it is in your hands to nurture them or let them go.
Question from the chat of Yuri Burlan's free online training "System-Vector Psychology"
« I follow my ex-husband on social networks all the time, although she herself left, barely got rid of him. A child was born from him. And now I'm watching, jealous. There were very strong feelings, like a drug. She also said that the child was not from him, so as not to get me (the whole pregnancy wore out my nerves). And now I can’t forget, I’m very physically attracted to him (everything was perfect in sex). What to do with it?”, — wrote Maria from the city of Moscow.
Your situation is similar to "emotional dependency" which can occur in a person with a visual vector, and the inability to “let go” of the former, obsession with memories of him is characteristic of the owners of the anal vector.
Let's take a look at what happens to a person who has anal-visual ligament of vectors in the event of a break in a close relationship.
People with an anal vector have a rigid psyche, that is, they do not quickly switch from one thing to another in the way that we can observe in a person with a skin vector. In System-Vector Psychology, the term "viscosity of thinking" is used. It is she who explains the behavior of a person with an anal vector in difficult situations, when switching occurs not only slowly, but, one might say, in no way.
In the event of a break in the relationship, there will also be a rigidity of the psyche and "viscosity of thinking", which will not make it easy to break the connection. There is a stuck in a situation, a person cannot get out of it, although he understands with his mind that the relationship has exhausted itself and nothing good will happen. But the unconscious brings him back to this relationship again and again. He begins to dig, analyze what and how, mentally trying to sort of " finish what you started».
An important role is played by the fact that in the anal vector there is a strong desire to create a family. The family is one of the main values of the bearer of such a psyche. And if the owner of the anal vector fails in creating and maintaining a family, then this affects his condition. Until a new relationship arises, he will again and again return to the old ones, unable to "completely leave", so to speak, "slam the door."
And new relationships will not be able to arise due to obsession with old ones. It turns out a vicious circle.
Same in the situation you describe. On the one hand, you yourself left your husband - perhaps the properties of the skin vector helped you decide to take this step - but then the properties of the anal vector manifested themselves to a greater extent and forced you to follow your ex-husband, although you write that he “worn you out nerves".
The visual vector, in turn, also prevents you from completely breaking off the relationship. This vector contains a large emotional volume. People with a visual vector are the most sensual, compassionate, eager to love and be loved, striving to create emotional connections. They need to give and receive emotions like air.
The emotional connection created with a loved one is vital and important for them. The rupture of this connection hits the psyche of a person with a visual vector, he loses ground under his feet, experiences suffering.
And so it turns out a paradox. With reason, we understand that the relationship has reached a dead end, that we receive suffering from a loved one, and no longer want this, and decide to break.
On the other hand, our unconscious guides us, and we are unable to resist it, because we do not understand what is happening. The human psyche is a complex mechanism that was previously difficult to study. The advent of System-Vector Psychology has changed the situation.
With its help, you can penetrate the secrets of the unconscious, answer exciting questions, and this does not require special education. All that is needed from a person is his strong desire to understand himself and change his life for the better.
The answer is written using the materials of Yuri Burlan's online training "System-Vector Psychology"
Are you secretly glad that your former friend - now an enemy - has not yet noted in the status that he has a new passion? Do you constantly check to see if he has new posts on his wall, and if the posts show signs that he, too, has someone? Or is he courting someone on Twitter? And when you try to refrain from updating his page, from another attempt to look into his account, you literally feel an itch in your fingertips ...
The habit of following the life of the former: you are not alone
Spying on the life of an ex is a phenomenon more common than you might think, imagine and imagine even in your wildest fantasies. So if your morning starts with browsing the VKontakte page (we hope you are aware that you can already track the guest list there?) And then smoothly migrating to his Facebook profile, you know: on this planet the same professionals. Moreover, both sexes - men follow the life of their ex in the same way. But, as a rule, the majority admits this only to the Internet, driving the query “I follow the life of the former” into the search engine. Not only that, some go even further - follow the life of the former of their new partner! What to do and how to deal with it?
The habit of following the life of the former is a variant of the norm
In fact, psychologists say that there is nothing shameful in the habit of following the life of an ex, just like in the habit of spying on the actions of a person who infuriates you, there is also nothing shameful. According to psychologists, in social networks we are interested not only in our friends, but also in our enemies. And some of them are so much that they are even ready to endure the second in a group of friends and read them in the feed mixed with real friends. In the West, a special term “shadenfriending” was even invented for this, the first root of which is translated from German as “jubilation”, “gloating” or “harmful joy” (isn't this the emotion we experience when we watch the complaints and lamentations of our enemy?). This is an understandable human feeling, desire, aspiration, an evolutionary mechanism. And the Internet has only made it much easier for us to find satisfaction: now it’s enough just to look at the ex’s Instagram from time to time to find out about the location of his last vacation, while Facebook will talk about his personal life, and LinkedIn will allow you to keep abreast of events at his work and about how his professional career is progressing.
Blame... the internet
A public social media profile lets you know what's going on in other people's lives without having to communicate directly. This is handy when the connection is broken for some reason - and not necessarily that this person was your heart friend or secret romantic sweetheart. We often follow former classmates, fellow students, occasionally we go to see how they develop without us ... and we do not always want to criticize or gloat, rather, we tend to watch them from afar. And often the ex simply falls into the same cohort, the category of people "from a past life."
Indeed, if without the Internet your life after a breakup could pass like “two parallel lines that never intersect”, today it is almost unrealistic, thanks to the ubiquitous social networks, each of us can get a clear idea of the new life of ours with one click. old guy. But what pushes us to this click? (Why not just click on a Youtube video? Or a fashion magazine preview?). Why does this desire arise to constantly be aware of the lives of those who are not part of your own? And why is it so irresistible? What is it: a manifestation of neurosis? Undying love (TTT!)? Serpent jealousy? Or, God forbid, addiction?
The habit of following the life of an ex: a difficult curiosity
Psychologists say that the habit of following the life of the former in most cases means practically nothing - just curiosity. But still, this curiosity shows something, especially if you look at the ex's profile with unenviable regularity. First of all, this may be a sign that you need to compare yourself with others, past life with the present. In other words, you evaluate your life, your achievements, through the prism of other people's opinions, through the eyes of other people. Apparently, you are just used to positioning yourself in relation to others, and this habit also extends to an ex-boyfriend or even his current passion. And if the comparison (his life with your deeds, her appearance with yours) is not in your favor, naturally, you also experience painful envy or irritation. It's funny, but we need such comparisons mainly to develop a sense of self-confidence.
Often the habit of following the life of an ex on the Internet indicates that you are trying to understand (for yourself) how good your life is without him. Sometimes the habit of “peeping” into his profile from time to time is the only available way to find out if you are on the right track, if you miss your old relationship. And indeed, this helps many to answer the question, did this person give you more opportunities for happiness than loneliness or the one that is with you now?
In some cases, as psychologists note, the habit of following the former symbolizes a craving for hypercontrol - the desire to keep abreast of all events, including those that occur in someone else's life. However, it should be understood that this control is illusory and relative, because the information presented in social networks is often distorted - both during presentation and in the process of perception. Therefore, spying on the Web will not bring you anything positive, constructive and useful, you are just wasting your time. Although in some cases things can get worse...
The habit of following the life of the former: alarming symptoms
In rarer cases, spying on the life of an ex turns into something like a mania - when checking profile pages and all traces of his stay on the network becomes part of the daily routine and eats up a lot of time. As the psychiatrist explains, even in this case, it is not a fatal passion that is to blame. The fact is that such checks are a manifestation of attempts to control: you need to control even that which has long gone out of your control zone.
Attempts to return him (no, not ex-control!) turn into informational bulimia: you just need to see his photo, know everything about everything, without filtering out the smallest trifles. This is how things go day after day, but one fine morning you notice that you are prioritizing information about your “ex” and not about you, your friends or loved ones. This is a signal of danger: banal espionage has turned into something more that threatens to turn into a mania or a fixed idea. And since you noticed this symptom, it means that not everything is lost: just delete the addresses of his pages on social networks from your bookmarks and logs and let him return there only when you stop feeling the craving for viewing his profile and the thirst for new news about him. Until then - tie it up!
