Unfriending Exes or "What am I, 12?"

Ah, the wonders of the Internet.

My natural tendency towards self-flagellation, plus a tragically cat-like curiosity, has often led me to lightly cyber-stalk my former paramours through the technological marvels that are Googling and social networking sites. It's never been anything over the top: I haven't signed up for a Lexis-Nexus account, hacked emails or anything ridiculous like that. Just looking in from time to time. I suspect many folks do it in this day and age.

And it hasn't always been an unproductive process - it's enabled me to re-establish friendships with certain people, find closure with some and mourn the loss of a few who tragically passed on. But for the most part, it's pretty much a fruitless and somewhat psychologically harmful exercise.

So today when I found myself inundated with updates from a recent ex on Facebook, with pictures of her frolicking all over town with her new beau, I finally resolved to delete her from my friends list. Who needs to see all that stuff?

Still, to be honest, it took quite a bit of effort. The jealous side of me raised quite a fuss, as it tends to enjoy living in/clinging to the past. Eventually, however, I clicked the little X beside her name, thus eliminating that particular temptation towards future self-inflicted angst. Difficult, but ultimately, probably necessary.

That done, let me just say how incredibly annoying it is to get any sort of carthasis whatsoever from an action on a social networking site. I feel like I'm 12.