Secret agent - Stalking your ex

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Previous Chapter:  Mind reading - What my ex is thinking

Yes, let’s talk about stalking. Let’s talk about turning into a secret agent and doing every trick in the book to stalk your ex. You want to know where they are, with whom they are and what they are doing. You want to know this every day or hour.  You want to know who they added as friends, what posts they liked, whose posts they liked, what messages they wrote. Stalking is a form of mind reading attempts and is absolutely the most harmful version of it.

Unfortunately, we live in the social media age and it is very easy to stalk your ex. And worse, people reflect the best and most awesome aspects of their lives on social media. The life you see on social media can be very different from the actual life of that person. If you frequently stalk them on social media, you may think that your ex is doing great without you and it may look like leaving you is the best thing that has happened to them. You may think that your ex is never thinking about you, does not miss you a bit and is very happy to kick you out from their life. 

On the other hand, some people feel temporary relief when they stalk their ex partner. For example they see a fresh photo of their ex at home with the cat and think “oh at least she/he is not out for a date”. But unfortunately this is a temporary relief and can cause more anxiety later. Because you cannot really know what your ex is doing from a photo. Later you will start to realize this and worse you will create “clues” of undesirable scenarios from simple aspects of the photo. 

Here is the real problem and it is really a big problem: By stalking your ex, by feeling relief or more anxiety based on your “findings”, you are giving your happiness and mental health in the hands of someone else. And since that person does not know this, they can inadvertently but occasionally torture you even if they again inadvertently make you feel happy for a short period of time. So as a result, every time you stalk your ex, your net anxiety level will go up.
If you leave your happiness to someone else, you make the power balance worse. Your main problem is the power balance which is against you and there is no good in making it more against you.

So yeah, do not stalk your ex. If you are stalking your ex please stop it. If you are stalking your ex on social media stop it too. Don’t check your social media frequently and if you cannot hold yourself, leave social media for a few months all together.

You will lose nothing if you stay away from social media for a few months. You should stop following social media accounts of your ex but if you cannot hold yourself just stop following social media instead of blocking them.

No Contact Rule is there to help you to heal from breakup and make you more independent and happy without your ex. You will get your ex or maybe you won’t both in both cases you need to heal from the breakup and you need to learn to be happy without depending on someone.

You have to change the definition of success. For you success should be achieving one of the two scenarios below:

(1) Your better version will get your ex back or,
(2) Your better version will find someone better than your ex.

You don’t need to stop wanting your ex back but this needs to be one of the two desirable outcomes. Believe me, many people find success by achieving the second scenario and do not want their ex anymore. This outcome does not look like an achievement now but it is and in many cases it is better.

Next Chapter Staying friends with your ex