My (20F) boyfriend’s (19M) ex girlfriend still tries to keep a place in his life.
For context, he broke up with her only 3 months before we started dating, but by now we have been together for much longer (a year and a half), so some significant time has passed. She was his only serious relationship before me.
I know that my feelings about his past don’t make sense, and that he is not to blame. I’m getting therapy for this issue, and slowly but surely it’s helping.
However, that’s made difficult by the issue that his past doesn’t just feel like it’s in the past.
For example, he knowingly followed her on social media and liked her posts. Before we started talking, he kept up posts of her, and only took them down once we got together. He’s apologized for following her, claiming it was a mistake on his part.
She’s sent him snaps on snapchat (he told me about this right away and blocked her).
Additionally, she went to a party hosted by his best friend (she tagged along with one of her friends). Here they encountered each other, but he only told me months after it happened, when I specifically asked when the last time they spoke was. He said the encounter was rude and that she was sarcastic, nothing more, and that his best friend hosting the party was shocked to see her there and apologized.
I have my own issues too, which come up in online sleuthing, and I’ve discovered some unfortunate things. Many of her TikTok reposts (roughly ever 4 posts or so) are about him, and many even mention me, because they talk about how “My ex boyfriends new girlfriend will never be liked by your friends like me”, and things about how I’ll never replace her. It feels like she’s speaking to my insecurities and it kills me.
She even came to his college (she goes to one an hour and a half away), found his direct location, and returned him his shirt a few months ago- all without communicating this to him prior. He told me about it right away, and he was tearing up doing so, since he was worried how I’d react (he knows I have issues about the past.)
I know the past is the past, but when things happen like this in our current relationship, it makes it much harder to move on. Ironically, I feel like she’s dealing with a similar issue that I am.