omg…this sounds like me. I was realizing what a burden Facebook seemed to be in my life and I deactivated it around 2 or 3 months ago.
I haven’t taken the full step of deleting it though. But the longer I’m away from it, the less I feel the inclination to go back on.
It feels like a relief and it’s hard to put into words why.

I mentioned to a friend once about how annoyed and stressed I felt regarding people’s posts. One person does nothing but complain, another does nothing but brag, others can be downright mean, but even the ones who seem like bags of sunshine didn’t seem to elevate the mood. And I think one of the things that started getting to me is that it was basically people saying the same exact thing every day…and some posting so many times a day, as if in bids for constant attention and approval. And I started not liking myself for thinking not very nice things about so many people every day!!! I feel that Facebook really promotes the habit of looking outside instead of looking inward.

So, in the end, this relief I feel at not being involved in it anymore is such a positive! But FB is so insidious in our culture now. I had deactivated my account a while ago and during the process of applying to a job online I had to reactivate it because this company wanted everyone to be on a lot of social networking sites. I don’t do Twitter or Vine or any others so I thought I had better reactivate my FB. I never heard back regarding that job app and so a couple of months later I deactivated it again. This time for good.

I really see no need to ever go back. But back to the friend I was telling about how FB made me feel stressed and anxious and she said that I shouldn’t take things so personally. Which, I guess is good advice. And , to be honest, there are some things about it that I will miss. I made new friends, reconnected with long lost friends but for me the negative outweighed the positive. And I know I made the right decision because I feel good, inside, not being there anymore. I can’t even tell you how many times people will tell me about being upset regarding a post someone wrote. You are right, it instigates a lot of problems in real life that probably would not exist if it were not for FB. I also agree that it does replace actual, real social interaction between people and so many regard FB interactions as adequate.

I agree with you that in the beginning, when it was just for college students it was probably the best and served a noble purpose. It’s now become nothing more than a tool to feed the narcissist within.

I think that the only reason I haven’t gotten rid of it entirely is because it seems as if not having a FB page is something that society has labeled ‘anti-social’…like something is wrong with you if you don’t have it. So I guess if I keep it deactivated for long enough I will get to the point where I can just take that final step. But for now, I’m just really happy to be away from it. ^-^

Alexxandra

Hi Bernadette,

I am going through the same thing. A two year relationship…it’s been over 2 months since the break up and for me it just gets worse every day. Not better.
I don’t know that I can offer you much…but sometimes it just helps knowing that others are going through it too. When I read your post I felt close to you just by this
shared experience.
Broken hearts hurt so much.
I hope we can get both get through this.

Alexxandra