Unfriend him now

   Break-ups are horrible. There are unstoppable tears, empty Ben & Jerry pots lined up in the kitchen, lengthy discussions on what went wrong, topped by the fear that we’ll never be able to love someone else again. It’s a shit time for anyone.

But the heartbreaks of previous generations were in no way as severe as ours for one reason: the birth of the World Wide Web. Or Internet, as others like to call it. Once we’ve eventually overcome the first post-break up stage (denial) and accepted that we will not be able to just “be friends”, we then have to decide what to do with our ex-significant other on every social media platform we’re both on.

While our hearts are telling us not to delete them for the purposes of mass stalking, our heads urge us to click the unfollow button. Why is he retweeting her? Who is that posting on their wall? And how will you cope when their new relationship status pops up on your news feed? Whip out the tissue box for round two of the sob-athon.

With such easy access to information about your ex it’s hard not to become a stalker with a skill set rivaling that of an MI5 employee. So this begs the question: how are we ever supposed to get over someone when we are constantly bombarded with ambiguous and hurtful information about their life?

To be brutally honest, we won’t. I firmly believe that time heals all wounds but social media acts as red lights on our road to a mended heart. We all know some tragic cases where people will do everything in their power to make their ex jealous over facebook or instagram. Most of the time this backfires, other times they may end up getting back together only to break up a second time.

     My advice to you if you’ve recognized yourself in any of the above-mentioned behaviours and feel it’s high time you moved on: proceed to delete your ex now. To the others: keep trawling for the plenty of fish in the ever-growing facebook sea. 



A column I wrote for my journalism class.