Online stalking and crippling low self esteem

[PeoniesGinandBags]

Okay so this is a hard one to write so please help...

Put plainly, I have crippling low self esteem and spend at least an hour every night poring over social media, looking at photos of my partner and his ex wife and torturing myself with them. Thinking about how much he probably loved her more, how she is 'better' than me, any photos where he is looking at her in anything like a remotely positive way.

What the hell is wrong with me? She even went on holiday with her friends recently and honestly, I am PORING over the photos to compare myself and feel shit.

For context, partner and I have known each other for 20 years but have just been together for 3. We are both divorced from our respective partners. We don't live together. He lives in our home town and I'm 2 hours away so we just spend weekends together.

Objectively and rationally I think I'm okay. I have a decent job, have nice friends and am not overly ugly or anything. Kind of low average I think.

My partner isn't some amazing model looking bloke. Very ordinary (I don't want that to sound awful but just kind of saying that I'm not batting out of my league or anything).

I cannot stop torturing myself. As a younger man he definitely had a reputation where we live and I can't even get over that. Even though it is before we got together. I mean, that's not normal is it? We're talking like 25 years ago and I'm agonising over it.

Please help. I know this might not sound like anything, or maybe it does, but I'm driving myself mad.

I think the best thing to do for your self esteem would be to delete social media.
It’s not healthy to be agonising so much over this.

Remind yourself that they split up for a reason. They aren’t together as they didn’t work out, they weren’t happy and he’s moved on.

If you keep looking online at her pictures then you’re going to make yourself even more fixated and that will cause problems in your relationship.

Focus on yourself, remind yourself that you are happy and that you two are happy together. Try see what the next steps are for your relationship and delete social media!

Yeah I agree, delete the socials or at least block her page from yours if that's what you're looking at, maybe find some counselling because this level of anxiety and lack of self esteem is clearly making you unhappy

Thank you both. It's like a bruise that I keep pressing to make it worse. How ridiculous?