Everything is official now. Throughout this difficult experience, you’ve worked out all the areas of separating your lives except one: social media. There’s pictures of the two of you all over Instagram and Twitter. Your relationship status on Facebook still says, “Married.” This may seem insignificant in the big scheme of things, but social media is a huge part of life now. However, social media post-divorce isn’t just about you, it notifies your friends and family of what’s going on too. Divorcing in real life is hard and doing it on the internet can make it even harder.
Social Media Post-Divorce: Private vs. Personal
Relationship Status
One of the first steps towards continuing your online life post-divorce is changing your relationship status. Easy, right? Well, maybe not. If you haven’t worked through all your emotions, changing your relationship status can make your divorce seem official. In turn, doing this can be very hard on you.
However, you still have to make this change if you want to use the same account. If changing your relationship status is hard, take a moment to figure out why. The process of using your social media post-divorce can help you to figure out what’s going on emotionally. Afterwards, more obstacles in your divorce journey may come easier to you.
Family Photos
Looking at old photos on your account can be harder than changing your relationship status. However, if you and your ex-spouse have children together, they are most likely in these pictures too. In this case, you can’t just delete the photos-even if you want to. Should you delete the photos that just have you and your ex-spouse or keep them all?
Ultimately, that decision is up to you. If you feel comfortable with keeping all of the pictures up, that fine! This relationship was a part of your life. Therefore, it’s alright if you don’t want to rid it of your social media post-divorce. If you can only keep the pictures that have you and your children in them, that’s understandable. This is your account and if having pictures of your ex-spouse bothers you, you have the right to feel comfortable.
Friends?
Whatever social media platform you have an account on, you have friends or followers. This is where the next hard step comes in. Should you unfriend your ex-spouse? On one hand, you don’t want to see them, their friends, or their new partners. On the other hand, you used to share your life with this person. If you have kids, this is person is also their parent. So what do you do?
Again, this is ultimately your choice to make for your social media post-divorce. If this is what feels right to you and you’ve put thought into the decision, then do it. Just know that anything you do may have an effect on the future of your relationship with your ex-spouse. Whatever you choose, remember that everything will get easier in time.
Social media has changed how a lot of things are seen and done. One of those things are navigating a divorce. Your social media post-divorce may be hard for you to look at starting out. Once you give it time, it won’t be so hard anymore.
