The Ex Outlet

Remember the joy changing your status to “In a relationship,” “Engaged,” or “Married”? It’s not such a fuzzy feeling when you have to change it back to “Single” or “Divorced”. Here are our recommendations for getting through those first couple of weeks on Facebook with as much grace, and as little humiliation as possible.

1. Do not deactivate your account. It’s time to re-claim your life, and your Facebook identity.

2. Adjust your privacy settings. Go to your privacy settings to make sure that your relationship status is private. If you do not do this, when you change your status to single it will appear in your 1000+ friends’ news feeds that you are now single. Some people will “Like” it and some people will comment. You must avoid this happening if you want a polite Facebook break-up. (Click Account in the top right corner, click privacy settings, click on customize settings, change your relationship setting to “Only Me”) Facebook does not make it easy to make this private.

3. Defriend your Ex. Go ahead, do it now. Then defriend his/her friends and family. Then block them. Yes it seems harsh, but the sooner, the better. Often, we wait until we see the dreaded picture of the ex with a new love before we do this. Or we stalk the friends and family to see what she/he is up to and fall to pieces when we see that they actually seem OK. Save yourself the impending misery, go ahead and defriend them all now. You are also sparing your ex the pain of seeing you living it up in your new single life.

If the break-up was amicable, you can send a short email or Facebook message to your ex to tell him or her that you think it’s best for you that you are not friends on Facebook for the time being and that you hope they understand. Keep it short and sweet.

4. Manage your photos. At this point you need to untag yourself from all of the photos of you and your ex together. If your ex is in your profile picture, you must change that too. This can be quite painful as reality sets in that your relationship is over online too. Send yourself a virtual gift.

Facebook has a special algorithm to avoid showing you photos of your ex in the future, so even they are trying to help you. Try to look at the bright side. When you do meet someone new, and they become your “Friend”, you won’t have to rush home to do this!

5. Avoid the following wall-posts: ex-bashing, heartbreaking song lyrics, drunken statements, gender bashing, and photos of you scantily clad with a group of hot males or females that look like they could be prostitutes. Although they may be cathartic, they all seem pathetic and desperate.

6. Make new friends. While we hate to drink the Mark Zuckerberg Kool-Aid, you should connect with more people. Now is a great time to confirm all of those people that have been hanging out in your friend request box that you were too nice to ignore. You never know where the friendship might lead, or who they might introduce you to.

Do you have any tips for surviving a divorce or break-up on Facebook? Let us know!