Facebook has given you the power to banish your ex on Facebook.

Having to see your ex on Facebook may be one of the worst things about the site.

But the company is determined to fix that, after launching a new tool on its mobile app to help users take the pain out of a relationship breakup.

When you change your relationship status to 'single,' Facebook will ask if you want to 'take a break' from seeing pictures and posts of your ex.If you do, then their name won't automatically appear when you're writing a message or tagging friends in posts and photos.

You also have the option of hiding certain things you post from your ex and can also limit people's ability to see past posts where the two of you are together.

Facebook says it will never notify your former partner of your decision.  

Up until now, the only options were to hide that person from your Newsfeed, unfriend them, or block them altogether. 

And there's a good reason to cut your ex out from you life on social media.

Couples who delete each other on Facebook are more likely to stay together, according to relationship expert Ian Kerner.

The New York-based therapist claims that unfriending your significant other on social media can put the spark back into a relationship.

Even better, he said, people should delete their Facebook accounts entirely to free up more time to spend with their partners.

Kerner, who has now deleted his Facebook account, said there were some challenges that arose in his own relationship because of social media.

'I realised for a little while with my own wife that I didn't really want her to be my friend on Facebook,' he said.

'I didn't want all of that extra information. If anything I wanted less information - I wanted more mystery and more unpredictability.

'I didn't want to know that she was posting about being tired or having her third coffee for the day.' 

Facebook 'stalking' can leave lasting damage by prolonging the distress, and it can even affect our future relationships, according to a recent study

In particular, the behaviour creates a cycle in which the site is used for reassurance, but ultimately makes us feel worse about the situation which makes us seek out further reassurance. 

The findings were made by Dr Jesse Fox from the Ohio State University and her colleagues. 

Participants in the study, including 150 male and 281 female Facebook users aged 18 to 42, were surveyed on their attachment style, how invested they are in relationships, whether they use social networks to look for 'alternatives', if they'd ever 'stalked' exes on Facebook, and who ended their last relationship. 

The researchers were particularly looking to study the interdependence theory. 

This suggests that two conditions predict how committed someone is in a relationship - dependence and 'quality of alternatives.'

Dependence refers to the extent at which a person's needs are being met by the relationship, while the 'quality of alternatives' refers to how much a person keeps their options open while in that relationship. 

The study said that people who develop what's known as an anxious attachment style as children are more insecure about their adult relationships and constantly question their partner's intent to stay in the relationship. 

These people are then more likely to use sites such as Facebook to explore alternatives, even if they're highly invested in their current relationship.

Individuals high in so-called attachment avoidance also express interest in finding alternative options, and use Facebook to do so. But 'avoidants' tend to share less resources in a relationship, so they are not as highly invested. 

This makes them potentially less committed than the anxious attachment group.  

Unsurprisingly, the study found that people who were more committed in relationships had higher levels of emotional distress following a breakup. 

This in turn makes them more likely to look for coping mechanisms, including 'stalking' their ex on social networks - officially known as interpersonal electronic surveillance (IES). 

The study found this trend is more noticeable if the person doing the stalking was the one who was dumped, rather than the one who did the dumping.

But this surveillance prolongs the distress. 

Seeing an ex-partner flirting with other people, or changing their relationship status, triggers negative feelings, which leads them to seek a coping mechanism and the cycle is repeated. 

Such behaviour can also make it harder for the 'stalker' to recover from the breakup, which may lead to more problems in future relationships.

Culled from Mail Online