Because your phone helped you fall in love, it can bloody well help you get over them. Five ways to use AI and tech to cleanse, reroute, stretch, rebrand and reinvent your way through heartbreak.

THE AI BREAKUP: Part One – The Cleanse

Your ex isn’t haunting you. Your algorithm is.

There was a time when breaking up meant removing someone from your life. You gave back their hoodie. Deleted their number. Cried into a tub of ice cream. The end.

Now? He can live rent free across roughly 47 different digital surfaces at once.

He’s in your Instagram suggestions. His friends are in your Stories. Spotify is still serving you “your song” like it hasn’t heard the news. Your camera roll is holding 1,847 photos you do not need to see again, ever, under any circumstances. And thanks to the internet’s complete lack of respect for personal boundaries, one innocent late night search can have you three clicks from finding out what he had for lunch.

So let’s get one thing straight.

You don’t need more willpower. You need a digital cleanse.

Think of it as an algorithmic exorcism. We are not deleting your history. We are making damn sure your history stops running your present.

1. Stop letting him appear in your feed

You don’t need a dramatic public statement. You don’t even need to unfollow him right away.

Mute. Restrict. Remove. Block, if the situation calls for it.

Instagram lets you mute someone’s posts and Stories, and Restrict quietly limits how they can interact with you without the full nuclear drama of a block. TikTok has its own version too, muting posts and notifications.

The AI move: ask ChatGPT to build your personal Digital Ex Checklist.

“I’m going through a breakup. Create a ruthless but sensible checklist of every digital place I should check to stop accidentally seeing, searching for or being reminded of my ex. Include social media, photos, music, shared accounts, subscriptions, location sharing, passwords and mutual digital spaces.”

Then work through it like the world’s least sexy IT project.

The goal isn’t to punish him. It’s to stop accidentally punishing yourself.

2. Evict his face from your camera roll

You know those 600 photos you haven’t looked at in months but somehow can’t delete?

You don’t have to.

Archive them. Hide them. Put them somewhere your thumbs can’t wander at 11.43pm on a bad night.

Use the photo search in your phone’s library to pull up every picture with your ex in it and shift the lot into a hidden or archived folder. If your camera roll is a genuine disaster zone, photo cleaning apps can help you bulk review duplicates and unwanted shots without doing it one heartbreaking swipe at a time.

Because nothing about scrolling back to 2019 for a restaurant booking screenshot is healing. Nothing.

3. Get him out of your music

This one’s sneaky.

You can be doing beautifully and then Spotify decides you need “that song” while you’re driving to work.

Absolutely not.

Spotify lets you exclude specific tracks and playlists from your Taste Profile, so they stop influencing what gets recommended to you. Go through the songs, playlists and artists that are basically relationship landmines and cut them loose. Then let Spotify’s AI DJ introduce you to something you’ve never heard before.

New breakup rule: if it makes you cry in the car, it does not get a vote in your algorithm anymore.

4. Sell the evidence

Here’s where we get properly NLIA. The stuff is often harder than the memories. The watch. The jacket. The stupidly expensive vase you bought together. The thing he gave you that you “might use one day.”

Girl. You are not running a museum.

Pick five things that belong to the old relationship and get them out of your house. Don’t let the emotional labour of listing them stop you either, eBay has AI tools that can generate listing descriptions and touch up your photos for you.

Or, obviously, list them on Never Liked It Anyway.

Take the photo. Let AI write the boring bit. Put a price on it. Sell it. Turn the physical leftovers of your relationship into actual cash.

Closure is nice. Cash is nicer.

5. Make stalking inconvenient

We’re not going to pretend you’ll never want to check. You probably will, at least once, probably at 1am.

The trick is making the behaviour annoying enough that you have time to reconsider before your thumb gets there.

Set app limits. Remove the apps from your home screen. Turn off notifications. Unfollow the mutuals whose entire function in your life has quietly become “unofficial ex correspondent.”

And build yourself a little AI intervention:

“I’m about to look at my ex’s social media. Don’t tell me not to. Instead, ask me three questions that will help me figure out what I’m actually hoping to find. Then give me one alternative thing I can do in the next ten minutes.”

Because sometimes you don’t actually want to know what he’s doing. You want reassurance that you’re okay.

And babe, you don’t need Instagram to give you that.

*********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

THE CLEANSE CHECKLIST

• Mute, restrict or block
• Archive the photos
• Exclude the songs
• Sell the stuff
• Make stalking harder

Your ex doesn’t need to disappear from the internet. He just needs to disappear from your algorithm.

That’s the first step in moving on. Not pretending you don’t care, but making it a whole lot easier to care about something else instead.

*********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

STEAL THIS PROMPT

Feeling tempted to check? Copy this into ChatGPT.

“I’m going through a breakup and I’m tempted to check my ex’s social media. Don’t just tell me not to. Ask me three questions that will help me understand what I’m actually hoping to find. Then give me one alternative thing I can do in the next ten minutes that will genuinely make me feel better. Be honest, funny and a little ruthless.”

*********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

FAQ

Can AI actually help you get over an ex? It can’t do your crying for you, but it’s excellent at the unglamorous logistics: spotting your triggers, building new routines, managing your digital boundaries, and turning “I should probably deal with this” into an actual to do list.

How do I stop seeing my ex on social media? Mute, restrict or block, depending on how much distance you’re after. Mute the mutuals too, kill the notifications, and use app limits to make compulsive checking a whole extra step you have to think through first.

Should I delete photos of my ex? Not necessarily, no need to be dramatic about it. If deleting feels too final, archive or hide them instead. You’re not trying to erase your past, you’re just retiring it from active rotation on your camera roll.

How do I stop stalking my ex online? Make it harder to do on autopilot. Remove the shortcuts, mute or block, unfollow whoever keeps accidentally surfacing him, and set app limits. When the urge hits anyway, use the prompt above and actually ask yourself what you’re hoping to find.

What should I do with my ex’s stuff? Keep what you genuinely love or need. Everything else can be sold, donated or binned, no sentimental exemptions required. Selling it is honestly the most satisfying option: relationship baggage in, cash for your next chapter out.

Can technology make a breakup harder? One hundred percent. Constant access to an ex, his friends, old photos and shared playlists keeps a relationship psychologically hanging around long after it’s actually over. Tech isn’t the villain here. Unmanaged access is.

*********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

THE AI BREAKUP SERIES, BY NEVER LIKED IT ANYWAY

Part One: The Cleanse: Get your ex out of your feed, your phone and your head.

Part Two: The Reroute: Redesign the everyday routines that keep pulling you back.

Part Three: The Stretch: Use AI to make your post-breakup life bigger.

Part Four: The Rebrand: Forget the glow-up. It’s time for an era change.

Part Five: The Plot Twist: Use AI to imagine the life you hadn’t planned for.