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It’s probably safe to say that most of us look up an ex on social media from time to time. It’s human nature to be curious about how a person’s life turned out after your time together came to an end. However, what happens when your little “check-ups” morph into a full-blown obsession? I recently watched an episode of MTV’s “True Life: I’m Obsessed With My Ex,” which raised a question in my mind: At what point does one abandon the ship of normalcy and find themselves in obsessive territory?
The episode documented the lives of two young people who were having tough times getting over their exes. A young woman by the name of Jade had a one-year-old son with her ex. After nearly a year of breaking up to makeup, they ended things for good. They had been together for six years in total. It was evident that Jade’s ex no longer wanted to be with her, but Jade still clung to hope in some ways. Despite the fact that the relationship was clearly over, Jade would torture herself by monitoring her ex’s Instagram page and keeping track of new likes and new followers. Once, she even showed up at his apartment and checked the rooms and closets to see if another woman was there. The other person was a young man by the name of Kaylind, who became fixated on a young lady who went ghost on him after four dates. In addition to stalking her Instagram page, he called her phone repeatedly and once resorted to driving past her house to get a glimpse of her. Scary stuff, right? But the even scarier part is that from the outside looking in, it appeared that neither party realized that their behavior was excessive or unhealthy.
Heartbreak is rough, and although it’s counterproductive, when the breakup is fresh, it’s very tempting to stalk your ex’s social media accounts every hour on the hour. However, where do you draw the line? How does one differentiate between enduring heartbreak’s usual ups and downs and experiencing something more serious?
Thankfully, for Jade, a wake-up call in the form of a child custody dispute snapped her back to reality and helped her to end her obsession with her ex once and for all. Kaylind let go after finally being confronted by the object of his obsession; however, it appears that he never actually saw anything wrong with his behavior, which is quite frightening.
When it comes to exes, there’s a thin line between curiosity and obsession. How do you know when your fixation on an ex is becoming unhealthy?
