Spring Cleaning Online After a Breakup
Know what type of spring cleaning is the worst? The kind dealing with trying to remove traces of one’s personal life from online platforms. In general, if anyone’s relationship is in any fashion temporary, the best plan to take is to lay low for some time, without sharing your business (and passwords!) so freely.
Plenty of other apps and websites, however, exist to help people with the various aspects of breakups. For example, for those who don’t want to keep gifts from one’s ex, the online market place, Never Liked It Anyway, helps people sell items their exes had given them. Then there is the Ex-App that blocks users from calling, emailing or texting exes from their phones (you know, maybe for those times when you just don’t want any temptations to rekindle anything).
There are also many apps that encourage lovebirds to document and make scrapbooks of their relationships! Enter Erase Your Ex and KillSwitch, apps that will, one step at a time, efficiently help you remove evidence of yesterday’s love from your (digital) life (that you posted), once and for all.
What if you are not so eager to be so aggressive, yet don’t wish for constant reminders of what was or what could have been? The following are some tips you might want to pass along.
Don’t stalk. Get off to a good start and don’t constantly look to see if your ex is posting or removing images. Let it be and take a break without worrying about what s/he is doing…..or posting!
Slowly remove traces of your previous love. Unless you find it important, consider not rushing to delete your past online activity. Changing your profile photo is a reasonable move, but anything more can be interpreted as spiteful or game playing.
Don’t play games. Instead of unfriending your ex, consider choosing the option to not view updates. How about giving your online activity a break, as what you might virtually be doing is lurking in a space that will somehow cause you more pain or grief, placing your virtually next door to your ex.
Don’t get reactive or even passive-aggressive. Let it be for a bit, then consider only posting positive and general updates, refraining from sharing either your woes or over-inflated “good news”. And most of all, remain strong as to not respond to any negative posts sent your way.
Get offline. Lastly, find genuine ways to connect with people with whom you care about and trust and try to use your devices for essentials, only. It will help with your grieving (or good riddance process) and take care of that spring cleaning, that, once and for all, will pave the way towards a new season.
