Should I be flattered that my ex went through so much trouble just to see what I was up to? Nah, I’m just officially creeped out and pissed off. He actually admitted to having mutual friends and even people I didn’t even realize he knew give him regular updates on me and my life. Who does that??
- Our mutual friends were mostly to blame. I know it’s sad, but I usually leave behind any mutual friends after a relationship ends. Why? Most of the people my ex used to spy on me were folks we both knew and liked. Since I still talked to them, it was easy for him to use them for information. Now, I don’t trust them not to take an ex’s side over mine.
- He knew about stuff I shared on social media even though I’d unfriended him. I didn’t bother deleting any people I’d met while I was with him. After all, what harm would it do to keep my new friends? A lot, it turns out, because they only cared about him. Once my ex casually mentioned something I’d posted on Facebook as Friends Only, I knew something was up. I immediately cleared out every potential connection he might have to me on all my friend lists.
- “Friends” I’d rarely talked to suddenly wanted to get closer. At first, I didn’t think anything of it. What I didn’t know was that one girl was an ex of his that wanted to get back together with him. I guess she thought spying on me for him would make him love her or some weird crap like that. Personally, if an ex asked me to spy on another girl for him, I’d probably just kick him in the balls and walk away. Anytime friends want to get closer to you after a breakup for no reason, avoid them at all costs.
- He randomly showed up to the places I went despite living far away. My ex moved about 100 miles away roughly a week after we broke up. I wasn’t checking up on him, but that was just a small part of why we broke up—he wanted to move and I didn’t. So how did I keep running into him a few times every month, and why was he at places he never went to before? His little spies were keeping him updated on everything I did and planned. These days, I never mention any of my plans to anyone unless they’re specifically involved.
- He ruined all my relationship prospects. I should actually thank my ex for this one, I suppose. If a guy isn’t secure enough to ask me about rumors before just ghosting me, he’s not worth my time anyway. Still, somehow, every time I started dating someone, he’d end up disappearing without a trace within a month. I thought it was bad luck, but my ex finally admitted to arranging to meet up with my new boyfriends to tell them about my “issues,” which I didn’t have.
- My friends started canceling our plans way more often. I know people are busy and so am I, but it was more than strange at how often my friends were canceling our plans. I found out later that if my ex didn’t want me to do something, he convinced my friends to either cancel or come up with different plans. Can you see why we broke up?
- He started the same career as me. He’d never shown any interested in my career path before, but when we broke up, he went back to school to pursue the same major as me. He even started getting involved in my part-time career so we’d see each other more often. While he knew about career number one, he never had a clue about the second one. I guess telling my supposed friends wasn’t such a good idea after all.
- My co-workers started to get extra friendly. It took me over a year to discover that the co-worker who started about a month before our breakup was one of his little spies. He thought I might be getting too close to my male co-workers and had helped her get a job where I worked to keep an eye on me. Sick, right?
- My blind dates were actually his friends. I’ll admit that he covered all his bases. Nothing was safe, not even my dates. Luckily, the blind dates weren’t all that smart and I found out within a week that they actually knew him. The moment they mentioned his name, I dumped their sorry asses. What’s worse is I still saw some of their cars drive past my house from time to time, stop for a few minutes, and then drive away.
- He knew everything I’d done over the course of several years. I typically avoided him whenever I saw him. It just seemed simpler that way. Plus, I was already pissed over the spying, which he denied at first. I finally confronted him several years later. I asked him questions he shouldn’t have known the answers to but of course he did. He knew everything I had accomplished, who I had dated, where I liked to eat and so on. It took a while, but I’ve finally erased most every trace of him from my life. What a nightmare.
