The question of de-friending an ex-spouse is something I have been struggling with – probably since my initial separation from Jabba.  I remained Facebook friends with her for a long time following our separation; not out of some futile attempt to hang on, but rather so that I continue to receive updates on The Kid.  Pictures, videos and random status updates about the goofy things he said or did made it worth putting up with Jabba’s mug polluting my time line.

Every now and then, I would see something like this that would really piss me off:

But I took it in stride.  I tried to not let it bother me.  I told myself that these occasional jabs were worth it to get updates on The Kid.  This was my attitude until about 2 months ago.  One night, I was telling The Auteur how I thought Jabba had me restricted.   After talking to my mom, I realized that Jabba was definitely blocking various updates from me, including pictures of The Kid.  At that point, I realized there was no reason to keep her friended, so I got rid of her.

In the Article “Science proves that you should un-friend your ex on Facebook”   George Dvorsky argues that maintaining a Facebook friendship with an ex only hinders the healing process.  Furthermore, he says that many people use the social networking site as a means of keeping an eye on their exes.  This article seems to agree.  The writer of this article argues that being Facebook friends with an ex is actually disrespectful to your current relationship.  I think, before I ever even read the Dvorsky article, this was my rationale when I decided to de-friend Jabba – make a clean break; rip-off the proverbial band-aid as much as possible while maintaining a co-parenting relationship for The Kid.

When I initially sat down to write this entry, I really wanted to present both sides of the argument.  I thought that there might be a good While the Yahoo article does concede that there are exceptions to every rule, I was unable to find any articles that supported the idea of remaining Facebook friends with one’s ex.