<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"  Compared with my other ex-boyfriends, Nick was a latecomer to Facebook, which meant I wasn&amp;#039;t able to reconnect with him until last year. Because this former beau shares a name with hundreds of other people, and because we have few friends in common, he turned out to be frustratingly elusive. Every so often, when I fell prey to boredom or procrastination, I&amp;#039;d embark upon a fact-finding mission of PI-style doggedness. But I&amp;#039;m no Veronica Mars, so until Nick joined the other 500 million people on Facebook, I was unable to figure out even his most basic details: where he lived, what he did, how he looked, who he had married \u2013 if he had married. And I really wanted\u2014no, needed\u2014to know. Over time, my casual curiosity developed into a distracting compulsion that waxed and waned in intensity. It&amp;#039;s not that I wanted to see Nick again, though he&amp;#039;d certainly been easy on the eyes. In a film about New England prep schools, he&amp;#039;d have played the prankster who&amp;#039;s always getting into trouble, then charming the headmistress into letting him off the hook. When I met him a decade ago, I was in the market for those kinds of giggles and antics, but that wasn&amp;#039;t the role that the real-life Nick was interested in playing\u2014he&amp;#039;d outgrown the mischief-making. We were ill-matched, and not in an opposites-attract kind of way. Our conversations were frequently interrupted by the static of awkwardness, which is why we, um, didn&amp;#039;t spend much time talking. After about a year, our physical communication started to sputter. When we finally acknowledged that our relationship wasn&amp;#039;t going anywhere, the question that stumped us wasn&amp;#039;t why we&amp;#039;d broken up but why we&amp;#039;d stayed together for so long. About a year after Nick and I broke up, I met a life partner who was right for me in all the ways that everyone else had been wrong. But Nick still felt like an unsolved mystery. I&amp;#039;m the kind of person who feels bereft if a friend ends a story prematurely, without revealing the ending. I&amp;#039;m also obsessed with figuring people out\u2014if you know me, then I&amp;#039;ve probably googled you. Eventually, wasting time sleuthing for information about Nick started to feel sneaky and dishonest, and I worried that it would upset my boyfriend\u2014but that didn&amp;#039;t stop me. I couldn&amp;#039;t get that Alanis Morissette song &amp;quot;Unsent,&amp;quot; the one where she writes letters to her former lovers that sum up their relationships, out of my head. If this were my song, here&amp;#039;s how his verse would go: &amp;quot;dear nick/you were irresistible and i loved how all the girls noticed you when you walked into a bar/but we had absolutely nothing in common/i think i always wanted you to be someone you weren&amp;#039;t/[filler guitar music] and what did you ever see in me?&amp;quot; I thought that maybe finding out more about Nick would give me insight into myself. But would it really work out that neatly? In the past, if you wanted to spy on an ex, it usually meant enduring plates of limp crudit\u00E9s served in backwater high school reunions, with current spouses on hand to chaperone. Now all we need is Wi-Fi, and the only way our partner will find out is if he goes looking too. Facebook, which allows us peruse photos of people we&amp;#039;ve never even met, is especially useful in finding answers to all of our burning questions about the one who got away. It&amp;#039;s even spawned a felonious all-purpose verb: I had become a Facebook-stalker. I prefer to think of this activity as &amp;quot;research.&amp;quot; Considering my inquisitive nature, I was surprised to learn that only 40 percent of women between the ages of 18 and 54 fessed up to using Facebook to track their exes, according to a recent Oxygen Media survey of more than 1,600 social-media users. Brits seem more likely to stalk-and-tell: In a poll of 1,700 people in the UK conducted last year by a people-search engine called Yasni.com, 62 percent of women\u2014compared with 42 percent of men\u2014admitted to having looked up a former love interest online (cheers, mates!). Online stalking has been scientifically proven to feel good. This past spring, researchers at the University of Missouri School of Journalism hooked 36 students up to sensors and monitored their faces and palms while they navigated Facebook. By measuring physiological responses associated with motivation and emotion, the researchers found that the students derived the most pleasure from activities described as &amp;quot;social searching&amp;quot;: &amp;quot;goal-oriented surveillance&amp;quot; (yikes!) that involved visiting another friend&amp;#039;s profile page, reading their Wall posts, perusing their photos, checking out the events they&amp;#039;d recently attended. Another reason we cyber-stalk: It makes us feel like Nancy Drew. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s like, `I am Super Sleuth!&amp;#039;&amp;quot; says my friend Annie. Facebook is really just a convenience for Annie. Long before the site launched, she tracked down information about a doofus who, after dating her for three years, broke up with her over the phone. &amp;quot;We never really had closure,&amp;quot; she says. When she heard he was getting married, she searched for his profile on a wedding website and found out where the reception was taking place. After the event, she called the venue and asked them for the name of the person who took the photos. Then she tricked the photographer into thinking she was a member of the wedding party so that he&amp;#039;d divulge the password for the online photo gallery. It may seem extreme to go to these lengths, but Annie wasn&amp;#039;t dating anyone seriously at the time, and she says she never had any intention of contacting her ex or his bride. Unfortunately, the thrill of the chase doesn&amp;#039;t always lead to a fulfilling outcome. While Annie says that discovering the photos that revealed the wedding to be a rather &amp;quot;drab affair&amp;quot; gave her a small sense of satisfaction, she admits that finding her mark also stirred up feelings of resentment. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;d like to say it felt good, but it didn&amp;#039;t really. I wanted him to live forever with his Campbell&amp;#039;s soup-for-one, without anyone or anything.&amp;quot; She added, &amp;quot;And I&amp;#039;m sure my time would have been better spent doing something other than this.&amp;quot;  Another friend came to regret searching for photos of her slacker ex-boyfriend on Facebook. When they were together, she had exerted a disproportionate amount of energy trying to motivate him, so she was initially thrilled\u2014and unsurprised\u2014to see that her ex had gained a lot of weight and looked &amp;quot;old and puffy.&amp;quot; Then she realized that he was also married and had a well-paying job. When a girlfriend tried to console her by reminding her that she was infinitely happier in her current situation, my friend felt annoyed. &amp;quot;Of course I realize that I have a fabulous husband and a fabulous life. But the thing is that I deserve to be happy\u2014he doesn&amp;#039;t!&amp;quot; I asked Christina Zampitella, PhD, an integrative psychologist who specializes in grief therapy for dealing with death and other types of losses and transitions, about this idea of &amp;quot;closure,&amp;quot; because it sounded like that was something my two friends needed (and maybe I wanted it too). &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s is a very personal and idiosyncratic process,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;When you love someone, they&amp;#039;re a poignant daily part of your life. When you lose them, you are separated from that relationship. Moving forward doesn&amp;#039;t mean you leave that person behind; it means weaving them into the narrative of your life.&amp;quot; Zampitella describes the three main phases of loss: separation (during which our identity changes\u2014for example, from &amp;quot;married&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;single&amp;quot;\u2014as we are separated from our former lives), limbo (the intensely emotional phase in which we ask ourselves, &amp;quot;Why did this happen?&amp;quot;), and reintegration (in which we try to find meaning in the loss and reconstruct our lives). In reintegration, we take stock of the lessons we&amp;#039;ve learned and the ways we&amp;#039;ve grown. &amp;quot;To me, when you&amp;#039;ve moved into reintegration, you&amp;#039;re finding closure,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;Getting back in touch with an ex can prolong the grieving process,&amp;quot; Zampitella concludes, somewhat obviously. Moving out of the limbo phase is hard enough without doubling back to see what you might be missing. &amp;quot;Unless you want to open yourself up to the possibility of remaining stuck, I don&amp;#039;t think it&amp;#039;s a great idea to spy on an ex.&amp;quot; What if the profile-peeping gets out of hand, turning a quick glimpse into a prolonged stare? James Hambrick, PhD, a therapist at the Columbia University Clinic for Anxiety and Related Disorders, explains the quagmire of obsession. &amp;quot;By thinking about something over and over, you&amp;#039;re legitimately feeling a little bit of relief. It may cause anxiety, but for some, that anxiety is preferable to feeling angry, sad, lost, and all those things they&amp;#039;d feel if that person was out of their life.&amp;quot; The problem is that this relief can prevent us from climbing out for good. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s very hard to let go of something as long as it&amp;#039;s an active problem that you&amp;#039;re churning over. What we often see from people trying to keep their heads above water is this idea of, `If I keep thinking about this person from different angles, if I keep taking in information about them, then I don&amp;#039;t get upset that they aren&amp;#039;t in my life anymore. Because in certain sense, they are.&amp;quot; Facebook can exacerbate the problem. For her new book, The Breakup 2.0: Disconnecting Over New Media, Ilana Gershon interviewed more than 70 people for whom Facebook-stalking of lovers\u2014current, past, and future\u2014was common practice. Yet although her subjects (mostly college students) were open to sharing the creative ways they&amp;#039;d used Facebook to check up on someone else, they were still embarrassed by their need to spy. Many complained that the application offered too much information about people. But Gershon, an assistant professor of Communication and Culture at the University of Indiana, concluded that the real issue was the stalker&amp;#039;s expectations. &amp;quot;Facebook offers potato chips of information\u2014you get a tantalizing taste that somehow doesn&amp;#039;t quite satisfy enough, and so you keep seeking a sensation of fulfillment, of being satiated,&amp;quot; she writes. &amp;quot;[It] offers the hope of certain knowledge, but rarely does one ever fully know for certain whether or not someone is actually flirting with your lover, whether or not your lover is actually being unfaithful....&amp;quot; And so you keep going back for more. This advice doesn&amp;#039;t make a very strong case for the psychological benefits of checking up on an ex. I&amp;#039;m still not convinced. Sure, it made my friends feel crummy to find out that their rotten exes hadn&amp;#039;t been served their just deserts. But at least now they aren&amp;#039;t consumed with a burning desire to discover the truth. Both friends eventually lost interest in checking up on their exes (&amp;quot;I just haven&amp;#039;t had the time! Or, to be honest, the inclination,&amp;quot; says Annie, who is now happily married with two babies). I can&amp;#039;t let go of the idea of Facebook-stalking as a bucket of ice water in the face of a red-hot obsession for information about a former lover. Aren&amp;#039;t there any situations where looking up an old flame can help us move on\u2014from the relationship, from the curiosity\u2014for good? &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s a double-edged sword,&amp;quot; says M. Gary Neuman, a marriage counselor and the author of Emotional Infidelity: How to Affair-Proof Your Marriage &amp;amp;amp; 10 Other Secrets to a Great Relationship. &amp;quot;Sure, it can cure curiosity. But what if you find out that his life is amazing\u2014then what? Following him can keep the pain alive.&amp;quot; Neuman dismisses my suggestion that Facebook can create a Sliding Doors scenario, providing flashes of Lives Not Lived. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s very unfair. People&amp;#039;s lives change drastically depending on who they&amp;#039;re with,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s like that old joke: A woman goes back to her high school reunion and introduces her billionaire CEO husband to a gas station attendant. Later, the husband says, `Who was that?&amp;#039; She says, `My ex-boyfriend.&amp;#039; The husband says, `Good thing you married me! If you&amp;#039;d stayed with him, you&amp;#039;d be married to a gas station attendant.&amp;quot; She says, &amp;quot;If I had married him, he&amp;#039;d be the billionaire CEO and you&amp;#039;d be the gas station attendant.&amp;quot; Neuman eventually agrees that it might help some people face the facts that the relationship is over. &amp;quot;But I really believe that it&amp;#039;s better to focus on moving on because you choose to, not because he did, and not because you feel like the decision is being made for you.&amp;quot; Neuman is rephrasing that old proactive versus reactive dating strategy: After we meet a guy, we&amp;#039;re loath to sit by the phone and wait for him to call, so after we leave a guy, why sit by the computer and wait for him to move on?  Zampitella conceded that the right person who&amp;#039;s in the right emotional place at the right time might find comfort in Facebook. &amp;quot;If you have the opportunity to have questions answered that you need answered, and it&amp;#039;s not going to set you back or make you fall back in love with that ex, then maybe this could be a helpful way to get closure,&amp;quot; she said. &amp;quot;But you have to keep in mind that time doesn&amp;#039;t necessarily heal all wounds. It&amp;#039;s what you&amp;#039;ve done during that time apart that matters.&amp;quot; So far, I&amp;#039;ve been focusing about how Facebook stalking affects the stalker\u2014but what about our relationship with a new partner? Every expert interviewed for this article would advise anyone in a committed relationship to think long and hard before looking up an ex. &amp;quot;My considered opinion is that people who are in a serious relationship should steer clear of tracking down exes online,&amp;quot; writes W. Bradford Wilcox, the director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. &amp;quot;In general, it&amp;#039;s helpful to establish strong physical and emotional boundaries against an ex once you&amp;#039;ve entered a new relationship. The reality is that all marriages have their ups and downs. When people are in a `down&amp;#039; spell, they can fantasize about someone else\u2014including an ex\u2014in an unrealistic and unhelpful manner. Better to put that emotional and mental energy into renewing your marriage rather than pursuing a fantasy.&amp;quot; Judging from the raised-eyebrow reactions I received when I told them about my Nick situation, you would&amp;#039;ve thought that I&amp;#039;d asked the therapists to consult on architectural plans for a tree house I was building outside his bedroom window. I just wanted to peek at Nick&amp;#039;s life, not set up residence within it. But after talking to Nancy Kalish, PhD, I better understand the need for caution. Kalish, an Emeritus Professor of Psychology at California State University, Sacramento, has written two books about rekindled romances and lost loves. For the 1997 Lost &amp;amp;amp; Found Lovers, she surveyed more than a thousand &amp;quot;rekindlers.&amp;quot; Most followed the same Hallmark Hall of Fame movie script: The couple fell in love as teens but were torn apart by an outside force (e.g., disapproving parents, a war, a cross-country move). Heartache ensued, but they got over it and moved on with their lives. Years later, mooning about what might have been, they reconnected, usually by enlisting the help of a family member, a mutual friend, or a neighbor (i.e., a de facto chaperone). In most of these cases, the two lost lovers were single. &amp;quot;These reunions were a great second chance for divorc\u00E9es and widows,&amp;quot; Kalish says wistfully. In 2004, when she decided to survey a new crop of 1,600 cyber-savvy rekindlers, it was as if Sam Mendes or Todd Solondz were directing the action: Bored husbands and wives (62 percent were married) were indiscriminately blasting friend requests to all their exes and quickly tumbling from sites like Facebook into face-to-face meetings into hotel rooms and affairs. Guilty confessions flooded the message forums on Kalish&amp;#039;s web site. So many people told Kalish that &amp;quot;accidental&amp;quot; Internet-triggered reunions were destroying their marriages that she started offering phone consultations to the confused cheaters and their anguished spouses. &amp;quot;People don&amp;#039;t believe that the feelings will come back, especially if they&amp;#039;re happily married, and many [of these people] say they had been in very happy marriages.&amp;quot; She thinks that these people use their romantic histories to justify cheating. &amp;quot;With the high school sweetheart coming back, so does the crazy adolescent thinking\u2014`I won&amp;#039;t get caught.&amp;#039; There&amp;#039;s also the `grandfather clause&amp;#039; idea that this person came before my spouse, so it&amp;#039;s okay.&amp;quot; In a national survey of 800 adults conducted in 2002 by the research firm Public Opinion Strategies, 30 percent said that there is one relationship in their past that they now wish would have continued (that includes 19 percent of married people). Interestingly, men pine more than women: More than half of the single men wished that a past relationship had continued versus just over a quarter of the single women. Unsurprisingly, Kalish is pessimistic about women and men befriending old flames online and about cyber-stalking in general. &amp;quot;If you&amp;#039;re married, I wouldn&amp;#039;t recommend it. It&amp;#039;s just too risky.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;It tempts fate,&amp;quot; agrees Neuman. &amp;quot;Not only because you might cheat but also because it&amp;#039;s important to keep the energy in your relationship. Instead of looking around for old boyfriends, you should be giving your full emotional self to your spouse.&amp;quot;  Hambrick, the Columbia anxiety therapist, had been less of a hardliner against cyber-sleuthing than most of the other experts I talked to. When pressed to say whether this activity could have any value, he said, &amp;quot;When you look and you see he&amp;#039;s engaged or has a baby, it gives you a certainty you didn&amp;#039;t have before. It could allow you to make a more informed choice. The pain you&amp;#039;ve been trying to hold off by thinking of this as a done relationship\u2014you have to engage with that now.&amp;quot; The problem comes when the stalker deludes herself into thinking that her ex really isn&amp;#039;t happy\u2014and she needs to be the one to make him realize that. If I&amp;#039;d talked to these experts before looking up Nick, I might have never reached out to him. But it was too late. About six months before my wedding, after typing Nick&amp;#039;s name into Facebook for what felt like the thousandth time, I found his picture staring back at me. He looked exactly the same\u2014no puffiness, all strong, masculine angles. I immediately sent him a note (but not a friend request), and he eventually responded with a characteristically friendly but laconic update that revealed little more than a tax form: the name of his town, the age of his kids, the nature of his job. Of course, I then sent a five-page thesis paper that recapped the past 10 years of my life, my intellectual growth, my current state of mind. I didn&amp;#039;t really expect a response, and I didn&amp;#039;t get one. Unsatisfied, I plugged his wife&amp;#039;s name into Facebook. Up popped a photo of a woman who wasn&amp;#039;t as concerned with privacy as her husband, because her profile included reams of personal information as well as\u2014score!\u2014dozens of photos. I&amp;#039;d be flattering myself if I said that this woman was similar to me; more accurately, she appeared to embody all the things I&amp;#039;d like people to say about me. She was cute, but more important, she made astute observations and posted kind, thoughtful comments to her friends. She seemed interesting and fun (go, Nick! Is this how he had perceived me, too?). And she clearly didn&amp;#039;t share any of my neuroses or hang-ups about things like motherhood and, especially, about Nick. In the photos, they were holding hands, hugging, laughing into each other&amp;#039;s eyes. I thought of that stock question that men&amp;#039;s magazine writers often pose to their male subjects: &amp;quot;If we put all the women you&amp;#039;ve ever slept with in a room, what would they say about you?&amp;quot; I&amp;#039;ve always been more interested in finding out what the women would say about one another. It&amp;#039;s fascinating\u2014if somewhat unsettling\u2014to see the other forms that our partner or ex-partner&amp;#039;s desire could take. Those women may not have much in common with us, but they&amp;#039;re still linked to us forever. I wouldn&amp;#039;t mind hanging out in a room with Nick&amp;#039;s wife, especially if that room was well-stocked with wine and cheese. I had a feeling I&amp;#039;d be more compatible with her than I had been with Nick, and that gave me an odd sense of relief.  I may be stalky, but I try not to be sneaky, so within days, I&amp;#039;d come clean to my fianc\u00E9. He&amp;#039;s blessedly immune to the jealousy that plagues mere mortals like me, and he&amp;#039;s also familiar with my need to know every tiny detail about a person or a story or situation. He seemed to feel that my interest in Nick&amp;#039;s current status was natural, but as the weeks passed and I continued to make comments about the wife (&amp;quot;She makes it look so easy to be a working mom...she must make a lot of money...she works out every freakin&amp;#039; day!...isn&amp;#039;t it great that she met her sister for lunch on Thursday? I wish my sister lived closer to us...&amp;quot;), he became increasingly disturbed. &amp;quot;Don&amp;#039;t you think it&amp;#039;s a little troubling that you do that?&amp;quot; he asked. He never told me to stop looking at her profile, but he did ask me to stop mentioning it. Finally, he said, &amp;quot;Yes, it sounds like she has a very nice life, but maybe you should focus a little more on your very nice life.&amp;quot;  It occurred to me that this stranger wasn&amp;#039;t my friend or even my Facebook friend. What if she found out that I&amp;#039;d been stalking her\u2014now the verb sounded creepy\u2014and updated her status to read, &amp;quot;My husband&amp;#039;s pathetic ex-girlfriend has been looking at my photos and reading my Wall. What a psycho!!!&amp;quot;? I&amp;#039;d be mortified. My partner was right: This was troubling. I was wasting energy. I&amp;#039;m glad I found Nick. He&amp;#039;s the same low-maintenance dude he always was: adorable and appealing but not my type. He was always baffled by my quirks, and unlike my partner, I&amp;#039;m sure he would be extremely put off by my interest in an ex-boyfriend&amp;#039;s wife (it&amp;#039;s also unlikely Nick would&amp;#039;ve come up with same wise advice that my partner gave). I&amp;#039;m really glad I found Nick&amp;#039;s wife, even if it stoked my jealousy for a while. I realize now that she&amp;#039;s just another one of the millions of people whose life I envy. And, really, how representative of our lives is an Internet profile? It&amp;#039;s no more authentic than a press release. As the &amp;quot;worst case scenario&amp;quot; experts warn, Facebook-stalking can be a gateway to a dangerous new obsession, but I found that for those who are tormented by the need to know, it can also be the dead end to an old one. For many people, learning the current status of an ex can be helpful in that it&amp;#039;s a total fantasy-killer. Maybe you find out that the thing that once drew you to him is now missing; or maybe, like me, you&amp;#039;re simply reminded that something was always missing. That may not be enlightening (at least, not as enlightening as I&amp;#039;d initially hoped), but it can be reassuring. I felt that opening this particular Pandora&amp;#039;s box had helped me seal the little mental shoebox of my relationship with Nick and put it away on a shelf. I never spied on him again. And after my partner set me straight, I&amp;#039;ve tried not to check on his wife, either. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/life-love/sex-relationships/advice/a11350/confessions-of-a-facebook-stalker-466906/>