After a few months, I realized I had enough of those happy posts, they did not do me any good and were not helping me heal, so I unfollowed him (but did not unfriend him).ДЇrom that point I didnвЂ™t see any posts yjat involved him, unless they also involved one of our many common friends and unless I checked his profile on purpose. After a while, he removed our вЂњin a relationshipвЂќ status (and added the one with his new girlfriend). I probably somehow unconsciously still needed to know everything. But at the same time, in a sense I felt paralyzed and could not do anything about that.

It was painful to see the frequent posts of my ex-boyfriend of a вЂњlook how amazing my life isвЂќ sort. The best solution I came up with was to manually вЂњhide вЂќ all the pictures from my timeline related to us, delete our message thread and unfollow her.ДЇinally, one day she blocked me (I wasnвЂ™t sending messages or passively posting jabs at her, for the record), and although I hate to admit it, that went the longest way toward meaningfully separating our Facebook lives. Turns out all you need to do to reactivate your account is log in, and once I discovered that, the distance gained became meaningless. She was one of the pictures, which struck me as accidentally cruel, but predictable, like a terrible snowstorm before your long drive home for Christmas. On the confirmation page youвЂ™re shown pictures of your friends and told theyвЂ™ll miss you. Facebook makes it hard on you to deactivate. One night, in an emotional state, I decided to deactivate my account to try to gain distance. I couldnвЂ™t find the official breakup tools that IвЂ™d heard rumors about, perhaps because we always felt the вЂњin a relationship with _вЂќ status was redundant with how intertwined our Facebook lives were.

When we broke up, I realized my Facebook had suddenly become a mausoleum to the relationship. Lots of pictures, lots of mutual friends. My then-girlfriend of three and a half years and I had a very visible relationship on Facebook.

Her interactive facebook