I’ve been with my partner for over three years now, but every now and then I still catch myself looking up his old flings on social media. We’re each other’s first serious relationship; and yes, we’re both well aware that we both have had flings, situationships, FWBs—whatever you want to call it—in the past and it’s never been an issue in our relationship. However, for some reason I have this bad habit of searching into his sexual past online. 

This habit started my freshman year of college when we had only been dating for a few months and were just beginning to adapt to long-distance love. I was a freshman in the fall of 2020, a time of social distancing and spending way too much time on the internet. I would use social media apps to procrastinate doing my school work, falling down rabbit holes into the past. I’d look up my old friends, classmates, co-workers—just for “fun.” I eventually found one of my partner’s ex-situationships, which only led me to look at all of the Instagram pages of everyone he’d ever been romantically involved with. This behavior had negative effects on my mental health because I was deeply insecure and would compare my physical appearance and how my life appeared on social media to the accounts that I was looking at. I wasn’t allowing myself to realize that social media is just a carefully curated highlight reel of people’s best moments or that someone else’s beauty is not an absence of my own. 

It wasn’t until when I studied abroad that I finally broke the habit. It was during this time abroad that I finally felt that my life was “perfect.” This notion was complete nonsense—I was still feeling very complex emotions daily like any other human being, but I had finally crafted the perfect online presence for myself by posting in various European locations. I no longer felt the need to spiral into my partner’s past. 

I went almost a year without looking at his exes’ accounts. I barely even thought about them anymore. My partner made me feel so loved that when I broke from this habit, I could finally see there was no need to dwell on the past. However, if I ever did feel a slight temptation to delve into the past, I would delete Instagram immediately. This, overall, helped me to realize how toxic social media truly is. I was cured. 

Well, until recently. 

This past September my partner and I moved into an apartment together, which was a big milestone for us. Everything seemed perfect…until I had a dream that involved one of his ex-situationships. It’s like she was almost erased from my mind but popped back into my subconscious to say no bitch, you can’t get rid of me! 

I woke up from this dream after my partner had already left for work and thought to myself, maybe one little search won’t hurt. I clicked on her Instagram only to quickly shut my phone off. I knew that I knew better than to fall into that habit again. 

A few days later, my partner wanted to show me something on Instagram, but his phone was dead so I handed him my phone. That’s when the unthinkable happened; at the top of my search history was one of his exes. His eyes went wide as he saw her username. My face immediately got red, my armpits were swamped with sweat—I was mortified. I snatched my phone away from him and averted my eyes. I didn’t know what to say so I just thoughtlessly blurted out that I had a dream about her a few nights prior. 

This was something that probably seemed so minuscule, but to me was so utterly embarrassing. Although it was impossible to avoid my boyfriend because we live together, I asked him to go on a walk by himself while I facetimed my best friend frantically. She tried to convince me that it wasn’t a big deal. When he came back from his walk I still couldn’t look at him. I felt like him seeing my search history was the equivalent of all my insecurities just being plastered on a wall for everyone to see. 

I felt haunted by the toxicity of social media. Although at this moment in my life I was feeling more secure and confident than ever, social media had the overwhelming power to throw me back into my old habits. I would have rather had this happen three years ago, when our relationship was fresh and full of nerves instead of our current state of being more trusting and comfortable with each other than with anyone else in our lives. I wanted to over-explain to him that this was a habit I had in the beginning of our relationship and I thought I broke it—but instead, I chose to drop it. I eventually talked to him again, but never about what had happened.Our relationship continuing its normal course through casual conversation was the reassurance I needed. Continuing on as normal allowed me to see that maybe this wasn’t as big of a deal as I had made it out to be. As mortifying as this moment was, I believe I needed it as a wakeup call to realize there is no reason for me to continue this toxic habit, and that I cannot find love or validation from Instagram in the same way I can through my partner.