my ex and i broke up about two weeks ago. during the time we were together, i would constantly check his social media if he hadn’t texted back or just to see what he was liking/looking at. 

although i felt gross about doing this, it only just dawned on me how absolutely vile and invasive it was to do. let me explain how bad it was:

it started with discord, i’d see him online but he wasn’t replying to my texts so i’d mention it to him. “i see you’re online”, i’d say. he would get upset, tell me it automatically turns on when he turns on his pc. he then permanently turned off the feature that shows if he’s online. then it was instagram. “i saw that you were online but i thought you said were sleeping :\” i did this multiple times for instagram before he turned off his activity status. 

on twitter, i would go through his likes to see when he was last active. if i’d seen that he’d liked a bunch of a girls’ tweets, i’d ask him about it. he stopped like all of her tweets. what the fuck is wrong with me?? all of this shit happened throughout the 2 years we were together. i would check his social media daily. 

he played an online game, and i was able to see when he’d last played or when he was in a game. i asked him about it. whenever he wouldn’t talk to me for a few hours, i’d get a text from him saying “sorry i was asleep :/“ but the game activity would say differently. i asked him why he would lie about sleeping when he was actually playing a game. he told me i was mistaken, but it kept happening. he was so upset and he told me how he felt like he had to change his gamertag (he really loves his gamertag) so that he could have some privacy. i didn’t know why he wanted to keep his gameplay hidden from me, i’d always encouraged him to play because it made him happy, this making me happy. i spent thousands of dollars on him, trying to buy anything that pertained to his interests like games, figurines and collectibles.

there’s a lot more context to this that would take quite a while to explain, like how we only saw eachother once a week despite living 10 minutes from eachother and he stayed home all day everyday. he once created a new tumblr because he wanted to follow a private nsfw account of a girl he went to school with. he had a discord chat with his friends that were all just naked photos of girls they knew (i do not believe he ever contributed to this groupchat or sent any photos). he never wanted to have phonecalls with me because he said he couldn’t hear me, but when i found a solution to that problem he still didn’t call me. 
all of these things made me feel so unwanted and like he was hiding things from me.

none of that matters because i never should have invaded his privacy like that. one by one, he had to shut off the activity statuses for all his social media all because his crazy ass girlfriend stalks him online and he can never catch a break. i can’t believe i did any of that. i can’t believe i didn’t realize the severity. i feel like there are so many things wrong in my head, and he probably thinks i’m batshit crazy. 

we broke up two weeks ago because i hadn’t heard from him for hours and he said he’d been sleeping. his mom texting me telling me he’d been yelling, playing the game for hours. i asked him about it and he denied it again. i called him, and said “i’m breaking up with you” and then hungup. 
the worst thing to ever do to someone is break up with them that way. i felt so upset and lied to, so i impulsively broke up with him over the phone without even thinking about my actions. 

we are now no contact, and i truly feel like such a disgusting person. we’re both moving on now and it was really hard the first few days but i don’t cry anymore, i feel much better and i go out with friends about 3x a week, talk to/met new people and realize i have a lot of options. 

but realizing how fucked up i am or was, is what’s really getting to me. how could i have not seen it sooner? i feel so bad he had to deal with that for so long. 
i just don’t want to be like that anymore. i don’t want to enter a relationship if i’m that toxic. i hate this so much. thankfully, i don’t care to check his socials anymore and i’m just grossed out and upset that i’d ever done it in the first place. i still get the urge to check to see if he’s okay. i just want to be healthy and not obsess over little things like i once did. i want to be healthy.