Why Are You Still Cyber Friends With My Ex?
By: Ellen Mcrae
Tags: Friends, Relationships, Love, Personal Development, Friendship

My Ex Isn’t Appart Of Their ‘Real’ Life

I’ve broken up with people before and understood the difficulty with mutual friends. That unpleasant feeling of trapped in the middle of two feuding people. Especially two people that you love equally.

It’s an unreasonable request, in my experience, for anyone to dictate who is friends with who. This sort of immature request is reminiscent of high school playground behaviour. So I could never tell my loved ones to unfriend my ex.

Especially if they were close before we started dating.

But with this ex, I know their association with him is because I dated him. And ever since we broke up, they haven’t caught up with him once. They haven’t been for drinks, or enjoyed a meal together, or even associated in the same circles.

Do We Know How To Separate Online and Real Life?

Sometimes I believe we’re unable to separate our actual life from our cyber life. We confuse the two, and think the two entities live side by side.

But I realised a few years ago that the two were very much linked. My Facebook friends were my real friends and vice versa. I decided anyone who I wasn’t friends within actual life shouldn’t be my ‘friend’ in my cyber life.

As I continue to strengthen and maintain relationships through online communication, I wanted the two to align. But not everyone has come to this realisation. Nor do they feel it as important as I deemed it. And that’s ok.

Yet, sometimes I wonder if we need to analyse the people who we associate with online. Are they adding to our life? Are they bringing us joy? Or are we hoarding them because our online life doesn’t matter?

If They Saw My Ex, They Wouldn’t Stop

The awkward run-in with a friend’s ex. The unsurety of how to react or what to say. It’s happened to one of my friends.

My girlfriend told me she saw him at an event, spotted him across the room, and walked the other way. She wanted to avoid “the awkward meeting”, as she described it.

My friend didn’t know what they say to him, or even a greeting. If they came face to face, would they pretend they knew each other? My friend said they wouldn’t. It would be better for both of them if they pretended they never existed.

If we’re scared to run into them in actual life, if we actively avoid them face to face, why are we ‘running into them’ online? We like their posts, or we watch their videos. We aren’t afraid for them to see what we’re up to online, but we wouldn’t let them in our personal space?

In my experience, there is freedom online. From the safety of our computer or our mobile phones, we can hide our embarrassment and pretend we don’t know each other. But if we’re going to do that, why stay cyber connected at all?

My Loved Ones Know It Will Hurt Me. Or Do They?

Every time I see that my ex is still a part of my loved ones’ digital lives, I’m hurt. My ex and I split experienced a nasty split, and it’s a toxic situation for me to revisit. I’ve told them about the pain I suffered, and the vile things he said about me, them and my entire life. Yet, digital de-friending hasn’t happened.

What I need to do is tell them how much it hurts me. I need to find the courage to say that their online loyalty to him hurts me every single day.

I need to express how my suffering seems irrelevant to them, because of their continual association. It’s like they haven’t remembered or cared how much I don’t want him near me.

I need to tell them how cautious their friendship with him makes me online. How I rarely tag them in posts in fear he will see. Their inaction is driving my actions, and I need to tell them that.

I want them to show their loyalty to me. I want them to show this by deleting him from their online circle. But is that fair?

I can’t tell people who they can be friends with and who not to. It’s not right for me to dictate the actions of others. But I keep hiding my pain, and that isn’t making me feel any better. How can they sympathise with me if they don’t know it hurts?

What If I Reversed The Tables?

Stepping into their shoes, I know they wouldn’t want me being online friends with their ex. They would want me to sever ties as much as they did.

Though I’ve never asked to delete someone’s ex from my circle, I’ve done it out of my loyalty to them. I don’t want any petty issues like this to destroy a friendship, and I would feel awful if they came to me and said how much it hurt them. So I do it before they can feel the hurt.

But not everyone thinks like me. And I understand that. Not everyone analyses their online relationships with the depth that I have. Some people place priority with other communication forms. And some people don’t invest any energy into their social media connections.

This is the new relationship world we live in. Every one values social media friendships their own unique way.

And what I’ve learned is this social media importance doesn’t define my real-life relationships.

What people do online, who they keep on their friend list, isn’t a direct reflection of how much they love me. It isn’t a reflection of how they feel about me, or whether they will be there for me when I need them.

And for those in the same situation as me, know that your friends’ online behaviour isn’t always a direct reflection of you. We are more than our online connections. I need to stop prioritising that form of artificial friendship in my worries. And more than likely, you do too. It isn’t worth losing sleep over.

Yet, it doesn’t stop me asking why. I either need to speak up or accept their actions.

The choice is up to me. And it’s up to you too.