How soon is too soon to post pictures of you and your new squeeze after a break up?

Facebook, instagram, twitter, snapchat – what have you – they make it easier to meet people, correct? Correct. But there’s a give and take of course.

When you split with your person, your post relationship interaction has now evolved past hear-say and uncomfortable run ins. Now through all these sadistic networks a sort of race begins. It used to be that you would have to pull yourself out of circumstantial depressed moods and endeavour to look good at every opportunity, just in case you might run into him.

Nowadays, it’s all preplanned. Instead of leaving it to chance you can just post an attractive photo of yourself….not just to rub it in their face but hey it’s an added bonus, right?

Social media, could easily be renamed ‘Self Branding’, because we’re always trying to use our original form and manipulate it into a more appealing version of ourselves, irregardless of our personal circumstances. Unfortunately this phenomenon is only amplified with the abstraction of a relationship status, to the point where you’re competing at who looks better off. Who looks happier to have the other person out of their life. It’s moronic, yes, but mostly it’s exhausting.

Perhaps it’s a symptom of restlessness, which you inevitably encounter after this immediate restructuring of your habitual routines.

Although, this little self directed online soap-opera you’re working on, by way of social networking, invariably gets worse. People say time heals all wounds, which of course is true, but I think you need to surpass all the steps in order for the benefit of time to come into effect. Here, the Moving on portion of your post break up saga comes into play. Yikes. The concept of your ex moving on and might I add, moving on before you, is excruciating enough without all of these platforms for flaunting your success.

So, how do we use the powers we inherited for good and not evil?

How much n-etiquette is too much hassle? Is it our duty to protect the feelings of our former significant other?

Perhaps it is just a question of time, before the statute of limitations demands that sensitivity has an expiration date. But what is the shelf life?

The period before it curdles probably has something to do with the nature of the break up and who initiated the ruptured bond. As well as the age old question, how important is it to maintain any kind of civil friendship in the future? If ex + Y = friendship, then Y would have to equal diplomacy and tact.  But as a general rule of thumb I’d say two-three months. By then you’ve probably both rebounded and been on a handful of dates to jolt you out of your couple coma and back into your vivacious single stamina.

However, just in case your ex isn’t the kind who will observe this secret rule of discretion, remove them from your newsfeed. And if the temptation to search their name persists, coupled with gut wrenching evidence that they’re enjoying life without you, bite the bullet and delete them from your smart phone. I mean it, unfollow, unfriend, unsubscribe and endeavour to relinquish your undivided attention.

But if you’re the liberated ex who feels unshackled from the weight of responsibility for another persons feelings – then my advice to you is to keep your activity private. Besides, it doesn’t always harness the reactions you’re expecting. Rather than looking ‘O-V-A-H it’ you wind up looking a little desperate to be fat, happy and back in the routines of coupledom. Calling someone you’ve dated for a few weeks ‘bae’ does not make you look like quite the stud you’d imagine.

The truth is, if you’ve moved on and have obtained this allusive chemistry with another, that everyone is always vying for, then isn’t that enough?

Is this hunger for reactionary theatrics just a symptom of being a game player? After all, that’s the plight of being a player, it’s near impossible to be extracted from your game.

While the option of becoming a contestant yourself and battling for the honour of ‘winning the break-up’ feels almost like a summoning once your ex has said ‘on your marks, get set, GO’ I find the best avenue is to unsubscribe and show that you only do things for yourself, and not just to get even or prove a point. Besides, flings are fun because of the anonymity, right? So why ruin it by archiving them in your timeline retrospective. Welcome to EditPad.org – your online plain text editor. Enter or paste your text here. To download and save it, click on the button below.