Why can't I stop checking my ex's social media?

You open the app before you decide to. Some part of you already knows what's coming. The tightness. The small ache. Still your thumb moves. Then it's done, and you feel worse than before you started. This is not a character flaw. It is a samskara — a groove cut by repeated habit. The mind runs down it without asking your permission. The part of you that notices the ache afterward, that says 'I did it again,' is not the groove. That part is the witness. It has never once done the checking. It only sees. Practice begins when you can tell these two apart. Not by shaming the checking. Not by fighting it in the instant of temptation — that rarely holds. Train attention in calmer moments, daily, so the urge is caught rising, before the thumb moves. If the ache runs deep, talking with someone trained in this can help alongside practice.