Ex Spouses and Social Media

[00807174]

What are your thoughts?

Personally I don’t want to see my x and her husband daily in my FB feed, and I am not friends with my x on FB she was following me on IG but I wasn’t following her and we both followed each other on Tik Tok, cause she’s posted videos of the kids, but not many…. My DW saw this morning and wasn’t too happy saying if you wanna be with her…. I’m like wait a minute…. You know that’s not what I want…. Her insecurities make it like it’s a trust issue.

[newwifenewlife]

-How long have you been married?
-it could be an insecurity…but could it be something she sees and you don’t?
-has your ex violated boundaries? Interrupted your private or parenting time? Overly involved in your marriage?
-is it really critical for you to get pics or videos that way?
-or are there other sources?
-if it’ll bring peace to your marriage, why not block your ex?
-if your wife has an issue, it’s now your issue too because you’re married.

My wife’s response: divorce is ugly and we aren’t made, and God’s design isn’t, to be married to more than one person with this shared intimacy. We were wired & made for a one flesh relationship with one person and this is especially hard for women. Men seem to handle it differently. (We literally just finished a “girl code” discussion at lunch that my wife had in two different instances about acceptable behavior with best friend’s spouses and another about women's responses talking about their friend’s ex’s.)

I think you have to seriously consider your wife’s feelings and what it does to her. Yes, you are still co-parents to your kids with your ex but it doesn’t mean you have to receive pics from her or have ways to DM her privately. This is the woman you said you’d forsake all others and sometimes it means doing things for their sake…sometimes it is also for our own sake, it just takes us longer to see.

Personally, I completely blocked my ex in the first year after our divorce. I didn’t want to see anything she posted as it didn’t help me heal. I was getting angry about the stuff she was posting that our kids could see because it wasn’t always good choices. Right now, my ex can only communicate with me via email or calling my office #; due to her selfish and poor behavior, I blocked her from my phone two years ago. Our boys are adults (23-27) but she has violated boundaries and wreaked havoc on myself, at times, my wife and so this is where we are at today…after 14 yrs of divorce.

[Link+Zelda]

Her insecurities make it like it’s a trust issue.

In your Introduction Post you directly said you settled for your now wife. No one here can know to what degree you were serious when you said that, or how true it is. However, even if there's just a small amount of truth to it, don't you think your now wife would be able to sense something is wrong and thus be (quite correctly) insecure about your relationship? While that may appear (incorrectly) in how she interprets your relationship with your ex, I think the underlying issue with the insecurity may be quite justified.

Have you tried talking to your wife about the roots of her insecurity? Are they coming from the situation you described in your Introduction? Do they come from past experiences in her own life? Both? All the above and more?

[Deleted User 2085]

What are your thoughts?

Personally I don’t want to see my x and her husband daily in my FB feed,

I have been married but one time; however, I was engaged to be multiple times before my ultimate commitment. That was not a healthy, righteous life.
Two former fiance's popped up on my FB page. In each case, my curiosity got the better of me and I read to see what life had brought them. I discovered a strong sense of affirmation for the original break-ups, those many years ago. One is on her fifth husband and the other did nude modeling, primarily for Penthouse Magazine, before being married three times. One of the five-timer's husbands did prison time for felony embezzlement from a casino.
I count it as "God protected me from a great down-fall."
More importantly: it brought to my memory the sins of my past. It was as though satan was holding a warped mirror to my face and gleefully saying, "See. This is you, the real you. You can never escape it" Thus, my salvation is brought into question.
Salvation is all about cutting off one's past, deleting those sins and starting again, fresh and secure in grace. Why talk of forgiveness through grace if one chooses to look back? Becoming a dead pillar of salt does not sound like fun.
I deleted and blocked all references to my past inequities. They do no good. They do only harm.
I have a happy here and now and a joyous promise of a future.

[Plumpurple]

I looked for your other posts for some more background and I really think your wife's feelings are justified unless things have changed for you in a very big way since last year. She may have had these insecurities from the start, but you shared that you only started talking to her when you were kind of trying to get over pursuing a relationship with someone else - who you still had feelings for and speak with. So insecurity would have been there from the start to know you were just settling for her in a sense and not getting into it for the right reasons.

I'm the first to own my insecurities that are not my husband's fault but he has to deal with anyways, but - and I don't mean this to come off incredibly harsh - I think this is largely on you and where your heart is at. It's easy to tell when your spouse or someone you're with isn't in it completely, and it's up to you to completely dedicate yourself to your wife for the sake of your marriage. Even if it's been years since speaking to other women, even a little "lapse" of doing so easily brings back the feelings of lack of emotional safety. And regardless of what your intentions are, you know you have a weakness for some of the other women in your life and in this context and with your wife's feelings it seems prudent to air on the side of caution in my opinion.