What to do when your wider network doesn’t cut ties with an ex-friend or partner, or you find creating space to heal isn’t as easy as you hoped
It used to be so much easier to move on. When a relationship came to an end, your ex could cease to exist in your world. You were given the peace and space to grieve where needed, and, more often than not, you wouldn’t be confronted with their presence invading your personal space.
Getting over my first ever relationship was that way. We didn’t have social media, or mutual friends, and so it was easy to not stay in touch. There weren’t constant reminders that he was moving on, or how he was moving on, or even who he had moved on with. In the past 10 years, I only ever heard an update about his life when a friend of mine happened to bump into him in the street. Nowadays, you’d be lucky to go 10 days without seeing some sort of digital footprint from them intruding upon your daily scroll, and I believe this inability to have genuine space from an ex slows down the healing process.
Whether it’s a new post notification, or suddenly seeing them tagged in a mutual friend’s photo, these unpredictable updates while you are trying to heal from cutting someone out of your life (or them cutting you out) can feel intrusive and unavoidable – popping up on your phone, at any time, and even in the safety of your own home. And it can be hard not to spiral, letting your thoughts run away and piece together a narrative of what’s transpiring, twisting it into something that can do more harm than good. You might see a post of them socialising, and tell yourself they’re not as affected by the relationship ending as you are. Or find out they’ve gone to see a band you introduced them to with someone else, and feel like they’ve replaced you already. These are all assumptions we tell ourselves, based on a snapshot of their life.
This is why I am such an advocate for blocking your ex-partners and ex-best friends – if they don’t get access to you in your real life, then they also don’t need access to your online one. And let the people in your circle know it, too! While you can’t control whether loved ones continue their contact with the person in question (e.g. by still following them on Instagram), you can share your boundaries by telling them that you’d prefer to not know any details of their activities.
This can be tricky to navigate, given that the people we bring into our lives often develop their own connections with our friends and loved ones, too. While it can be uncomfortable to know that their bond doesn’t necessarily end when yours does, I believe we can’t dictate whether friends and family stay in touch with an ex.
This can be tough to process, especially if things didn’t end amicably, or you feel your connection is stronger, and so you assumed they would choose ‘your side’. But the reason I don’t believe in choosing sides is because I wouldn’t want anyone else making me choose one. In reality, we all have different boundaries, and so the reason for a relationship or friendship ending might not be something that matters as much to them as you – and vice versa.
Over the years, this has meant I have friends who are still in contact with people I’ve chosen to cut out of my life, and that can be hard to see. If how this ex-friend or partner behaved is outside of my morals, I may question the relationship I have with the mutual friend, if it illuminates values that I might not want from a person that I choose to have in my life – but at the end of the day, it has to be my decision. We have to all learn our own lessons with the people in our lives, and respect it when people make a different choice to us.
For those circumstances where mutual friendships continue, the main thing is to set boundaries. People often share unsolicited details without thinking, or because they might assume you would rather hear it from them, but if that is unhelpful to you, let them know. It can be as simple as saying ‘I appreciate you are trying to help, but, right now, what I really need is to know as little about them as possible.’
Likewise, it’s important to ask the people in your life to respect your boundaries in terms of passing on pieces of information about your life. Your heartbreak is not their personal gossip column, and we live in a culture that is too normalised in talking about each other behind closed doors – so we need to break that pattern by confronting it head on. If you’ve not directly mentioned this, it can be easy for others to claim naivety, whereas if you have specifically said you’re sharing information in confidence, it is a lot harder to break a boundary that they’re aware of.
If your boundaries aren’t respected, then you have to decide the consequences. Perhaps, the outcome is that you no longer trust that person with information you care about, or that you are more selective about who you keep around you in this healing period.
Navigating the network of mutual contacts and friends can absolutely exacerbate the heartbreak you are experiencing, and that’s why it’s so important to stand up for yourself, and voice what you need in order to help you process and move on.
Comments