Thanks to MN I stalked my ex and this is what happened....

[chatenoire]

There's this thread going on about "where would you be if you had stayed with your first love"... So I found him on LinkedIn and clicked on his profile. TBH I thought he'd ignore me .. but instead he messaged me back and said he didn't really understand why I looked him up. I just said I was approaching 40. We exchanged a few messages about our careers but he kept going back that he hoped I found what I wanted to find. He definitely took it too deeply. He even remembered the number of years we haven't been in touch (I definitely had lost count!)

She probably wants us to tell her that he’s still in love with her. That’s the reason she wrote that ‘he knew the number of years we haven't been in touch’...as if he has been pining after her all that time. 😬

I don’t think it’s odd, and I don’t think it’s weird to have a small catch up. I do find it weird to find it funny or a big deal.

My husband is in touch with all of his exes. In fact I even tried to get her DH a job (I don't even know her!) So this will depend on the individual/couple.

I find this a bit odd as well.why can’t you talk to or look up an ex, doesn’t mean you want to shag them.

It doesn't by default but if you pay for their premium subscription it does. If you view someone else's profile there is no way (AFAIK) of knowing if they are standard or premium. It's not really an issue if you are looking people up for legitimate professional reasons but if you're using it to snoop on people from your personal life it could bite you in the bum.

If I had stayed with my first love I would be widowed now.
My second love, probably divorced. I was head over heels in love with him. He didn't felt the same. He was always putting me down, calling me fatty ,( I wasn't fat) 38 years on I looked him up on Facebook and there he was. Looking as rough as a dogs arse and massively overweight. I was going to message him and ask him.why he ghosted me but no point really

Knowing that your ex will get a notification that you'd been looking at his profile is so embarrassing 😄 I don't understand the reason being 'I'm turning 40'?

It has to do more on the settings on the other end. I'm not premium, but my privacy settings do show every single time I looked someone up.

LinkedIn premium does appear as a gold checkmark on the profile

I had no better explanation... Thought that telling the truth would sound even weirder (as in there's a thread on this forum and I wanted to give accurate information).

I can’t concentrate on the story due to the misspelling of OP’s name.

Chat noir or chatte noire.

• makes mental not not to try snoop anonymously on linkedin.

I'm glad it wasn't a too awkward exchange and he was obviously curious as if weirded out you'd be more likely to ignore than initiate contact. MN seems like alternative universe lately but it's actually not unusual for people to look up past ex's, friends or work colleagues to see what they are up to, surely that's partly why Facebook was successful.

It was an MN post that prompted me to do a search on my first long-term ex ages ago, partly because we split and never saw/contacted each other ever again where others had faded out. They appeared to have a built career out of a hobby and fulfilled their desire to travel in one, a possible partner and child. If not an emotionally abusive, cheating arsehole, I would've felt happy for them as during our time together it was frustrating to see someone intelligent and gifted with talents never put the effort in to use in a career and instead had a stubborn attitude ( if can't be recognized as amazing straight off, I may as well do any easy dead end, low pay jobs instead).

It's easy to look back through rose tinted lenses and skim over the less positive memories if inclined. I'm thankful that none of my ex's I feel may have worked out in a different time.

Never snoop on LinkedIn if you’re logged in! I don’t have a premium account and I can see who has viewed my profile recently.

I think looking up exes is perfectly normal. I’ve looked up exes, and random friends I’ve lost touch with, just out of idle curiosity.

Yeah I had been careful in the past, but this time I thought he wouldn't care as it has been 15+ years. We obviously have moved on.

Rule #1 of stalking on LinkedIn: set your profile to private mode. I thought everyone knew this!

I'd have used the reasoning of "you came up as a suggested connection, not sure why. I clicked to see what you were up to. Glad you're well." and then left it at that personally.. but it's done now.
I think if he was weirded out by it the best thing he could have done however would be to just ignore you looked at his profile. He was definitely overreacting (a bit).

Can you do that it if not Premium?

Christ, rule number one of stalking - don’t click on their linked in profile. I often have a little Facebook / Insta / X stalk but I’d be absolutely devastated if they knew!

Yes! You go to Settings, then 'Visibility' and select 'Private Mode' under 'Profile Viewing'. Happy stalking! 😉

That would have been a VERY good reply (silly me didn't think about it at the time).

He's FB is private and have no idea if he has IG or not. LI was the easiest way as I know what uni and sector he's in.

😂Cheers! 🍸 A whole new world has been opened!

For sure it's all the fault of Mumsnet.

Didn't your mum ever ask you what you'd do if she told you to stick your hand in the fire?

I’m surprised he messaged just because you looked at his profile

Someone I dated and subsequently stopped bothering to maintain contact with (due to being an annoying knob) looked at my LI and I just thought eurgh. Definitely wouldn’t have initiated contact.

I don’t think it’s that weird to look up an ex on social media. It is unavoidably a bit cringe if you get caught. I think your explanation ‘I’m nearing 40’ was an odd one.

HE is the weirdo here, who sends a message after someone looks at your LinkedIn? Actually I do know who, blokes who fancy getting their ego stroked a bit, he was probably hoping you would say you never forgot him and would love to meet for a shag coffee.

My first answer was, that I was simply curious, but he wouldn't drop it. So I just said something like "well I'm almost 40, so it must have been triggered by that". At some point he asked if I was satisfied because he was not a CEO, but he does have self depreciating humour, so I took it that way.

I thought so as well.. But apparently not. It also works when the other person has premium, btw 😅