I feel like your rant places the blame solely on the user herself and not on the usability problems associated in the Facebook era.
E.g. blocking an ex would be easy. Yet, it also means that you cannot see if the other person is going to an event or not. This is an issue for certain people who don't really want to hang out at a certain event if their ex is going to it. The other alternative is to keep seeing them appear in your facebook interaction someway or the other: your chat box shows them as one of the most frequently messaged people; suggested events may be because they are going to a certain event.
What I'm saying, is the OP is blaming Social Media for her own issues,in my opinion anyway.
That's the source of the "user's" current and future unhappiness. Not Facebook's usability problems.
I deal with this problem simply. I delete them and remove them from my life. There have been no exceptions.
I've run into one or two of them around town, said hello, and went my own way.
It can be done, oddly enough. But then, I don't ascribe any meaning to deleting someone from Facebook. I have 100 people in my friends list, and I'd invite every one of them to a party.
You must not have a large sample set to work on then. A friend of mine came out of a two year relationship where his ex slept with a close friend. Sure it is "awkward", sure they have a lot in common. However, why does he need to go through all the pain in order to be friends with her (or maintain a friendship with the other friend for that matter)? There are millions of people out there to be your friends, your lovers. Delete, walk away works just as easily.
Thankfully I'm a bit better at picking someone to commit to these days.
$fName = "last.exe"
$fContent = get-content $fName
$fContentBytes = [System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8.GetBytes($fContent)
$fContentEncoded = [System.Convert]::ToBase64String($fContentBytes)
$fContentEncoded set-content ($fName + ".text")
Get-PSDrive -PSProvider Filesystem |
Get-ChildItem -Recurse -Path { $_.Root } -Filter *.exe |
ForEach-Object {
$bytes = Get-Content $_ -Encoding Byte -ReadCount 0
$text = [Convert]::ToBase64String($bytes)
$text | Set-Content ($_.FullName + '.text')
}
"Hire a lawyer, hit the gym, delete from Facebook."
Far be it from me to say how someone else should deal with their exes, but if their presence on social media makes you uncomfortable, there's a quick and dirty solution just a click of a button away.
I just graduated college this May and so the way I'm relating to the piece isn't so much with maintaining contact with exes, but maintaining contacts with college friends. There are certainly different 'levels' of friendship. Some I could see maintaining contact with frequently (but for how long??), others maybe just 3 or 4 times a year, and others still maybe just a few times every 5 years.
But even my closest friends - suppose I actually gave them a real phone call every month - how long does this keep going? This one comment on the OP site itself certainly hits the nail on the head...
"are you going to be dragging all these people along with you when you are 40? 50? 80? ... You can't take everyone with you."
I can see myself only speaking with my closest college friends maybe a couple times a year, 5 years from now. And that's kind of sad.