Facebook helps you to cut your ex out of your life

Break ups happen. Relationships come to an end. It might be an amicable termination, but the chances are that it's not. You probably never want to hear from your ex partner again. Unfortunately, over the years, you have built up a shared circle of friends, and you're both connected to them on Facebook.

Depending on the circumstances of the break up, you might want to go as far as ditching the online friendship and blocking your former beau. But you might not want to take things quite that far. With this in mind, Facebook is now rolling out new features that kick in when you indicate that you're no longer in a relationship, so you won’t be constantly reminded of what you have lost.

If there's a chance that things might get back on track at some point, you might not want to completely sever ties. At the same time, you might not want to see your once lover's name and picture popping up constantly -- Facebook can now help to calm the frustration. Rather than completely cutting yourself off from each other, Facebook will instead offer you the opportunity to 'see less' of your ex.

This means that their name will not pop up as a suggestion when you type, you won’t see their posts in your news feed, and you're also able to limit what content of yours is visible to them. You might not mind some of your photos and status updates being seen, but you may well want to hide others beside those you explicitly tag your former partner in.

Facebook says:

We're starting to test these tools today in the US on mobile, and we’ll make changes and roll them out further based on people's feedback. All of these tools are optional, and people will be able to access them in the help center anytime.

This work is part of our ongoing effort to develop resources for people who may be going through difficult moments in their lives. We hope these tools will help people end relationships on Facebook with greater ease, comfort and sense of control.

Would this make a break up easier for you to handle?

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