#getoverit: a wake-up call for the broken-hearted

Rose, a 26-year-old property manager, recently had her heart broken. Matters have not been helped by a friend telling her: ‘Check into Tinder now.’ There, possibly even posting from the bar that used to be ‘their place’, was her ex. ‘He had waited 33 hours to start looking for sex,’ she shudders. ‘I couldn’t help myself. Using my colleague’s phone, we flirted with him. He told me his ex had been clingy, needy, boring in bed, so now he was “looking for fun”. I felt sick. I still feel sick. I was shaking.’

An exes-on-Snapchat anecdote sounds even more disturbing. Taking advantage of the impermanence of the medium — where messages flash up for ten seconds maximum — a London couple once in the habit of using the app to share sex shots engaged in an argument that started with genital hygiene accusations and ended in death threats.

January’s status as official break-up month means that virtual stalking of this sort is currently reaching epidemic proportions. Ten years ago, one might be unlucky enough to stumble across lunatic ex behaviour only occasionally. Today, it feels as if everyone is teetering on the brink of some meltdown, encouraged by a permanent virtual proximity in which the stiff upper lip has been usurped by the constantly clicking finger.

Back then, one could move on both physically and emotionally: detach oneself from the object of one’s despair by changing house, job, or social circle. Now, ex-lovers are left painfully hovering, all-too-fleshy ghosts forever manifesting in feeds and timelines. As I write, I have been contacted by not one but three former lovers, all keen to at least flirt with the idea of reuniting.

Social media makes separating from any lover — partner, friend with benefits, even the ostensibly random shag — incredibly difficult. You can de-friend them, but can you ever truly be rid of them when you remain so digitally connected? From seeing them tagged in friends’ photographs, via the temptation to stalk their every move on Twitter, even approaches from the banal tedium that is LinkedIn, it becomes ever more challenging to ruck up, get out and move the hell on.

Brunel University psychology lecturer Dr Tara Marshall recently published a paper entitled Facebook Surveillance of Former Romantic Partners, which concluded that those who remained virtual friends with exes found it considerably harder to recover. She observes: ‘After a break-up, I found that a large proportion of people are likely to engage in Facebook stalking... And people who do that more frequently are more likely to report greater distress… more negative feelings such as anger, hostility, hatred and jealousy. They also report greater sexual desire for their ex-partner and greater longing.’

Nevertheless, there is nothing some won’t do to rub salt in their own wounds. A friend’s iPhone issues an alert every time her ex posts on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram; the drip-feed of information is constant. She is not so much a woman on the verge, as a woman completely and utterly submerged. It is no exaggeration to say that his virtual life has become her actual one.

A thirty-something television editor reveals: ‘I was in a really bad relationship for over ten years with a very controlling woman. She made our lives a misery: seeing friends was an issue, seeing my family an even bigger issue. She made me delete all mentions of her on social media. Christmas was banned. You can imagine how fascinated I was to see if her new partner was going through a similar ordeal. Far from it — they even celebrated Christmas together! I became addicted to their Twitter feeds. Every time I looked, I felt worse, but I couldn’t stop. I’d sit on the bus scrolling through their tweets to each other, muttering indignantly. I had to wean myself off this self-destructive habit, but God it was hard. The temptation to stalk was always there at hand in my phone. In the end, I had to delete the app and shut down my account. It’s made having a clean break feel nigh on impossible. Knowing that I can be a fly on the wall is still sometimes just too much to resist.’

Julia Bueno, a UKCP registered psycho-therapist who maintains a busy North London practice, tells me: ‘In the past three to five years, I have noticed a significant increase in clients who complicate the grief of a break-up through maintaining an online relationship with their ex. The temptation to soothe unbearable feelings of loss, hurt and anger by making this “contact” can be impossible to resist, especially when it can be done at the tap of a finger. I have seen such behaviours become obsessive and, like other addictions, serve to ease distress momentarily, while increasing emotional damage. I encourage cutting off all contact — online and offline — until a client feels more able to think about an ex without pain. Galvanising other resources alongside helps, too: making contact with nourishing relationships, and pursuing fulfilling activities.’

Experts agree that it is essential to cultivate distractions. Have sex, have fun, have something else going on in your life. You must, repeat, must go cold turkey and cut off all virtual contact. Announce this intention and request back-up from friends: no tagging or gratuitous references. Try putting geographical distance between you and the ex: a phone-free holiday, say. And disable and hide all technology ahead of a night on the tiles.

Where blocking can feel too revealing to the other party (face-saving being all), just as there are apps to ensnare you, so there are those to set you free. Remember the Girls storyline in which Charlie (Marnie’s boyfriend) became rich after creating the app Forbid that prevents users from calling their ex, charging them $10 if they break their promise? Well, these things exist (see below).

Some opt for pay-as-you-go phones without internet access, others quit the online world altogether. ‘If you want me, I’ll be on a landline,’ one disciplined refusenik explains.