You (and many others) seem to be totally missing the point. He is not browsing through her albums, incensed that she dare show how she’s moved on. It’s that she changed her PROFILE picture so quickly, so that “every time I stumble across an old message or old post by her, I’m left looking at the smiling picture of the new happy couple.” So he could be looking back a few pages for some info, and there would be messages from her saying “I love you so much poopikums” which now has the photo of her with the new one.
Then the answer is to delete the old messages and posts, and to stop spending precious hours of his life wondering why she does anything, because it doesn’t really matter at this point. If she is doing it to hurt him, it only works if lets her. In the much more likely event that she’s doing it without thinking of him at all, well that makes his obsessing over it even more pointless.
And I’ll echo the ‘don’t fill in your relationship status’ sentiment. Mine actually is filled in ‘single’, but I’m not having any of this ‘it’s complicated’ crap. It’ll say ‘single’ unless I ever have a reason to change it to ‘married’. As previously mentioned, if we’re not close enough for me to tell you about my love life, you don’t need to know about my love life.
No, I’m not missing the point. Unfriend and block her, for god’s sake. Wow, how DARE she go on living her life! The nerve! :rolleyes:
But why would you keep messages like that from an ex? I understand wanting to keep pretty pictures, even if they involved the ex.
I don’t understand keeping messages that say “You’re the love of my life, and we’ll be together forever”, when the relationship has ended. If those are the types of comments where he is seeing the new profile picture, of someone who is not even in his network anymore… then he needs to delete those messages.
Of course, “etiquette” is a changing thing, and I think, to answer the question in the title, if not the OP, that the answer is we just don’t have etiquette established for Facebook behavior in the event of breakups yet. We will, but not yet.
This thread has enlightened me, though, that profile pics change retroactively, even one the pages of people you’ve UnFriended. That suggests to me that perhaps it would be nice if people kept their profile pics to pics of themselves or neutral avatars. Post what you like in your albums, but to be smart, or polite (which of course is not a requirement, but that’s what etiquette is - politeness that’s not legally required), maybe it would be kindest not to make your profile pic too illuminating as to what’s going on with you relationship-wise.
Please note, I don’t think she did anything wrong, and I still think the OP should be proactive about Blocking her so this doesn’t bother him anymore. But speculating on what the etiquette may become once this technology has been around a while, I can see it being rude to post a couples pic as your profile pic post-breakup.
(I will admit, I have a bias against pictures of cats, couples, children and celebrities as a person’s profile pic. I just feel like it should be a picture of **you **there, that’s all.)
I don’t think the voicemail was, “Hey, your dad is dead; see you at Thanksgiving.” I think it was more, “Call me back right now.” Sister was just not thinking when she updated her MySpace.
Or people could just resign themselves to the fact that if they’re going to stalk their exes and/or go back and sigh over old posts and messages, they’re going to see things they might not want to. Speaking personally, if some guy broke my heart and was all over another woman five minutes later, I’d actually *want *to know about it–nothing makes it easier to get over someone than realizing they weren’t the person you thought.
This. I sincerely doubt the ex was scheming, knowing that the OP is just terrible at cleaning out his Facebook inbox, and waiting until he stumbled upon a party invite from two years ago, and BLAM! Ha! She wins!
If anyone here legitimately thinks this was some intentional fuck you. . .jeez.
Yeah. The only way you could possibly make that assumption would be if she PMed the guy about something inconsequential to be sure he’d see the new photo. Or, say, emailed the actual photo to him with the note, “Isn’t my new boyfriend a hottie?” But just updating her profile photo? :rolleyes: Shock of shocks, her exboyfriend probably isn’t the center of her universe anymore.
Well, there’s passive agressive fuck you’s and there’s basic tact. While she might not be guilty of the former, she’s certainly guilty of lack of the latter. Especially if she really did dump the OP for the new guy after six years together. That’s a bitter pill to swallow. As the dumper, it wouldn’t take too much effort on her part to make sure the OP doesn’t inadvertantly stumble upon a pic of her and the dude she left him for. Given the length of time they were together, chances are they have a fair amount of mutual facebook friends. Chances are also fairly good that he would see the pic on one of their pages via some comment from her. It’s just basic courtesy, really. At least until the wounds have had a chance to heal.
And how long is that? Again, “immediately” means something different to a normal person than it does a jilted ex.
And we haven’t had clarification of that “immediately” either.
Again, if you don’t want to feel salt on fresh wounds, don’t look at your ex on Facebook. Yes, unfriend. Yes, block. Get him or her out of your life so you don’t keep dwelling on it. It’s not her fault that you still have her on your facebook friends. If you can’t handle seeing her new life, it’s not her fault.
She’s not even on his Facebook friends- she deleted him. He just never deleted old messages from her, so he can see her picture when he click son his inbox. If only there were an easy way to rid yourself of that problem. . .
Her obligations to go out of her way to avoid offending the OP ended the second they broke up. So, while specifically contacting him to tell him about a new boyfriend would be tactless (rude, in fact), simply updating her photo is not. In fact, it’s bordering on creepy for him to even be asking if the photo change was directed at him.
I mean, gee, what if he just found out she was dating someone else?! Clearly, that would crush him!! So after dumping him, she definitely should have observed a mourning period for their relationship. I think 1/3 of the time they were together is a fair amount, don’t you? So this woman shouldn’t be allowed to even look at another man for two years.
:rolleyes:
Yeesh, people, put down the pitchforks. No, we don’t know down to the hour how long after the breakup she changed her pic. However, given the OP, I believe it’s safe to assume it was while the wound of the dumping was still fresh. That could be anywhere from a few hours to a few months, depending on the circumstances of their break up.
I’m not saying she shouldn’t be allowed to post pics of her new guy on her page. I’m just saying it’s a little tactless to change her profile pic, which not only appears on her page but other people’s pages as well, in the days and weeks immediately following a break-up.
I don’t think it was directed at him at all. I just think it’s in bad taste. Probably not intentional on her part, but still on the tacky side.
Why? Why should she be expected to structure her life around what might hurt her ex-boyfriend’s feelings? She might as well not invite the new boyfriend over, in case the OP decides to stop by and peek in her windows.
OMFG. She’s not saying she can’t invite her boyfriend over, OK?
GAWD.
She’s just saying that it would be tacky.
Block her or ignore her. She has unfriended him, so she may very well think that nothing she does is going to show up in things he usually browses. That may not work so well, though, if they had a lot of common friends.
But, if what he is seeins is old messages by her… dammit, why does he keep them? If it was a tasty awesome recipe, surely there is a better way to keep that information than mixed up in a mess of facebook messages, no? If it was a romantic “love you forever, sweetie”, why would you keep that after you’ve broken up with that person? If it is a mundane message… why keep a mundane message around forever, even more, one written by someone who dumped you and unfriended you?
I gotta go with Shot From Guns and the others who say the ex-girlfriend can do what she damn well pleases with her profile photo on her FB account.
So unless the OP comes back and addresses a few of the assumptions that have been made, no one has convinced me that this ex-gf needs to worry about a guy she’s not sleeping with anymore.
That’s my point. He can unfriend her, delete her messages and all that but if they’ve got a bunch of common friends, her profile pic is still going to be popping up all over the place if she’s commenting on friends’ posts, ect. Anyone who posts regularly on facebook knows this. Have enough friends in common with someone and you’re going to see that persons profile pic. It happens.
Shot from Guns, you seem to be taking personal offense at this. Project much? Girlfriend can do as she pleases. Other people can think what she pleases is tacky. To each their own.
Eh, Guns just gets emphatic when she argues.