I’ve developed a worrying new addiction since breaking up with my boyfriend. So many people are doing it too: ESME GORDON-CRAIG

It’s Friday night and I’m scrolling through social media while waiting for the bus on my way to the pub.

Suddenly, I’m watching my ex-boyfriend’s latest Instagram story – and from what I can gather, he’s at the very same pub I’m heading to now. Uh oh.

I have no desire to see him (or at least, not in the outfit I chose to wear today). But before cancelling my plans, I open another app: Find My, the tracking app that tells you the location of your family, friends and, in my case, ex-lovers.

Looking at the icon indicating his phone, I breathe a sigh of relief. He’s not at the pub, he’s safely back home.

You might consider this situation – the stalking of my ex who I haven’t seen in person in two years – embarrassing on my part, not to mention a dystopian invasion of his privacy.

But speaking as someone who has been tracked by my parents since I was a teenager – and who now tracks everyone from friends to the stranger I swapped numbers with at the club last Saturday night – I don’t agree.

Because knowing where your nearest, dearest and, er, ex-est are at all times is the new normal. So normal, in fact, that I know the ex-boyfriend in question still tracks my location too, because he’s listed on the app among the people who can see me. He also has the option to block me from seeing where he is, which he hasn’t chosen to do.

Most of my friendship group does this too, whether on Find My or Snapchat’s Snap Map. But it’s not just Gen Z keeping tabs on all those in their lives. Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver and his wife Jools, both 51, recently filmed a ‘micro-comedy’ series about tracking your spouse for popular tracking app Life360.

Still, I know many may remain unconvinced on the wisdom of tracking an ex and vice versa.

Our relationship began in early 2023, when I was 22, after meeting at bar on a night out. I followed him on Instagram the next morning, he asked me out on a date, and after a month of seeing each other we began sharing our location.

There’s just something so convenient about knowing where your boyfriend is – how long until he gets home or if he’s running late for drinks. Once, he texted me while I was on the bus telling me to get off at the next stop, because he’d seen on Find My that I was nearby, and he wanted to see me. Cute, right!

Despite what cynics may think, never was location tracking used maliciously, or as some shifty means to ensure neither of us cheated. The way I saw it, the app only added to the fun of our relationship, making everything simpler, less messy.

But, like most couples in their early 20s, we broke up after less than a year. Except when you break up with someone in this day and age, you have to break up with them twice: once in the real world and again in the digital.

And the digital break-up is far more complex.

It’s not just choosing whether or not to unfollow them on Instagram, but also LinkedIn and running app Strava.

You need to remove them from your TV streaming services or sacrifice your access to theirs. And yes, you have to make the Orwellian decision of whether or not you carry or tracking them.

If you think it would be a no-brainer, then you’re wrong. Even if you’re the person who initiated the split (which I wasn’t) it’s horrific having to disentangle yourself from the life of someone you once loved.

Yes, I knew for the sake of my mental well-being that it would be best not to have his location accessible at the push of a button. But I also didn’t want to let that final piece of him go – even if that piece was only a chip in his phone. True, it may have just been a digital connection, but it was a connection nonetheless.

I also didn’t want him to see I’d removed him from Find My (if you restrict someone’s access, it comes up with ‘No Location Found’).

I wanted to seem cool, indifferent to the situation and unaffected by his online presence. This despite cool, indifferent and unaffected being words you certainly could not use to describe me. Insane, maybe.

Paranoid, definitely.

With his location available to me 24/7, I became obsessed with the app, checking it at random points in the day.

I’d look at where he was on a Saturday night. If he was out, I’d think: Is he on a date?

If he was at home, I’d wonder whether another girl was there with him, keeping him from hanging out with the guys. 

Throughout all this I was plagued by the idea that he was doing the same thing, watching my movements just as he still was my

Instagram stories (something I knew for a fact, given you can see who has looked at them).

Conscious of this, for the first few weeks post-break-up I was more social than ever. You never know when Big (Ex)Boyfriend is watching you.

Thankfully, I resisted the temptation to stage an ‘accidental’ encounter – although there were times when friends had to physically stop me from doing so!

Two years on from our break-up, we’ve now tracked each other for longer apart than together. Whether he still looks at my location too, or has simply forgotten we can track each other at all, who knows.

Looking back, I see now how the ability to track my ex prolonged the pain of our break-up, providing me with a constant reminder of his existence at a time when what I really needed was to forget all about him.

Has this realisation stopped me from tracking him? Of course not. Because while he’s still got my location, I’ll be keeping his.