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(By Tshidi M Wyllie).
Date: 11 DECEMBER 2022.
Introduction
You are not a bad person, you are not going crazy. You just went through divorce or a relationship breakup. Therefore, you may be feeling like your walls are crumbling down, you may be experiencing mixed emotions such as; anger, sadness, hopelessness, despair, bitterness, resentfulness, self-blame,emptiness, blaming someone, separation anxiety and all these may lead to lathergy, loss of appetite, sleeplessness, chronic headaches, etc. It is normal, and some days will be better than others.
Whilst going through all this traumatic experience of grief and loss of a relationship, a partner and love you may see yourself constantly having the need to check on your ex, or going through their social media pages etc (stalking). Also known as a condition called obsessive relational intrusion,
1.. Anger
Anger trigger tendencies to want to spy on " Exes", to monitor or keep tabs on Exes out of spite, being vindictive, and out of jealousy. In such situation the person feels enraged at being rejected or dumped and develops the desire to revenge/retaliate
2. Psychological disorders
Some personality predispositions like borderline personality disorder, may cause one to fail to let go of the previous relationship, and that may lead to the use of manipulation with efforts to try to control the ex and have them back.
3. The desire for Control
The desire to have control over situation often leads to spying on Ex as a way to have control. This is because being dumped can sometimes make a person feel helpless, angry, and develop the desire "to exert control on the Ex without backing down". Similarly, one can be unreasonably difficult, and make impossible demands just to be vengeful, and often its the kids who suffer ( if there are children involved).
4. Wounded Ego
The thinking is ; " if he/she loved me, how could he/she love someone else so fast?. So, you want to check if he has forgotten about you already, immediately after your breakup. You then wish he/she was still hurting as you are, so you keep on checking his/her social media pages for possible signs of him/her being heartbroken because "that will give you the ego stroke", and the comfort feeling that you are in the same boat ( re a tshwana).
5. Difficulty Accepting Rejection
This can be when someone want to monitor their ex as a way of controlling the feelings of rejection. This is the most hard and painful because those words of;"its over" or "i want divroce", "this is not working" etc can still be ringing in your head making it difficult to accept the reality, and making it sound and feel like you are dreaming or in a shock state and possible denial. Therefore, some find themselves coming up with ways to stay in touch with the Ex e.g using kids, mortgage, relatives, self-induced crisis situations etc just to stay in touch despite feelings of being "always rejected". This may lead to inability to have a social life, loneliness and/or "social incompetence", failure to move forward through pain resulting in feeling "stuck".
6. Distorted thinking
This emanates from feelings of "having a sense of entitlement"; believing that he/she belongs to you and no one should have him/her. This can lead to being stuck on the idea that you’ll win the person back , that the person will be miserable in their new relationship and come back, the false hope that their relationship will fail or the mindset that "we were meant to be together" ; irrational thinking that; "he/she can never be happy with anyone else but me" etc.
Only to be further heart broken by hearing that the person is getting married and seeing their happiness on social media platforms or receiving updates from friends you shared. This may lead to difficulty in facing the reality of the situation, and one may develop excessive anger, panic attacks, may hyper-ventilate , develop high blood pressure, loss of apatite or excessive eating, stomach ulcers, chronic headaches, backaches or any other psychosomatic ailments.
7. Addictive behaviour
As you all may know, love is addictive, being in love can be similar to being on drugs. When you feel love, dopamine is released in the brain, and the more dopamine you experience, the more you want. This feeling of desire doesn’t just disappear when your relationship ends (Blake,2021 ). The reward circuit part of the brain continues seeking to experience more love and affection despite the relationship having terminated.
Therefore, you might be checking up on your ex because you’re still chasing that love adrenelin and hoping for more. According to Blake(2021), there was a study done that showed that when researchers showed people pictures of their exes and took MRI scans of their brains, they found neural activity in the areas of the brain linked to craving and addiction.
8. Curiosity
Often its not because you want to get back together with your ex, but you find yourself just being a bit curious to see what he’s/she's doing, and who he’s/she's dating. It may be totally harmless, but is it mentally healthy for you to do?
# Do you get emotionally triggered as you do it?
# Do you find yourself becoming more angry?
# Do you become more distressed?
# Is it serving any purpose?
# Is it helping in anyway?
# What gratification are you getting out of it?
With this type of "harmless-stalking”, research has indicated that at least 88% of the people who have done it used facebook(Blake2021) .
This however may cause so much emotional pain , and more anger. But eventually one gets tired, blocks the ex and his/her friends and is able to move forward with life or seek therapy to help them move forward through the emotions towards complete acceptance and therapeutic healing.
9. Obsession
This is common among males, not to say females are immune.
This may starts from the dating period and what the female may perceive as being "given attention" may infact turn out to be an obsessive controlling behaviour. This happens when one gets fixated on the partner.
Then during marriage it may manifest as controlling, tracking tendencies, attitude of wanting to know your where abouts every moment, and with whom you are with.
After divorce it may get worse as the person continues to monitor the ex, and freaks out on hearing that the ex has moved on. If narcissistic personality traits are present, it may worsen the situation as the perpetrator may have tendencies to portray himself/ herself as being the one mistreated by the victim.
10. The need for closure
One might be checking up on their ex because they need some reason why the relationship/love ended. In your head, you want to see if he’s/she's moved on with someone else right away, which would validate your believes that he/she had someone on the side ("small house") all along while you were together so you will feel validated, justified and right to breakup with him/her. Often this emanates from self-preservation attitude, and the desire to project a complete opposite of what you really feel, and the truth on what really transpired.
References
1. Emamzadeh, A. (2022,February 17 ). Why certain people stalk their exes.
2. Blake, J(2021)11 Scientific reasons people stalk their Exes after relationship breakup.
3. Lane, K & Orenstein, H (2021,July 8). Here's the ultimate guide to getting over stalking your Ex's Instagram.
4. Gottman (1999).The 7 Principles for making marriage work. Retrieved from
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