A bit of a rant here. As the title says, I am currently looking for a new job on LinkedIn, and an ex-boyfriend keeps showing up on my “people who viewed your profile” page, and it is getting on my nerves. This is someone I dated yeeeeears ago, in university. We’re both in our mid forties now. A little over ten years ago, he reached out via email (my old school account that I still check once in awhile) to tell me that he was married with a kid now, that he’d gotten therapy, and that he was sorry for being such a shit bag while we were dating. This being pre-FDS, I (foolishly) replied, saying that I accepted his apology, that I was glad he’d sought out therapy, and that I’m sure his family will be happier for it (I know 🙄). In his reply to mine, he immediately started joking about things that had happened between us as though we were still friends (which imo we had never been in the first place), asked if I was on any social media, and generally gave off scrote vibes (referring to his son as “the boy”—something I’ve always found irritating). Nothing egregiously offensive, but I decided that I didn’t have the emotional energy to let this person back into my life, so I ghosted him (while wishing I’d never replied in the first place).
Since then, he’s emailed me every five years, with general updates on his life (which I do not care about), and questions about mine (which is none of his business). I haven’t replied, and I have to wonder if his wife knows he’s emailing his ex-girlfriend, and what she would think about it if she did.

Anyway, fast forward to a couple months ago, when he showed up on my LinkedIn page as having viewed my profile as the result of a search. We don’t work in the same industry, and afaik he still lives on the opposite side of the country from the region that I am looking in. So it’s unlikely that my profile would have turned up in a search for potential hires. I dismissed it as him looking up people who went to our university, but then he showed up on my page a few weeks later. And a few weeks after that. And I’m getting increasingly annoyed by it. I should probably mention that this scrote absolutely destroyed my self esteem while we were dating, and that it took years for me to fully recover from it after we broke up. So seeing his face (same underbite, now with more eye-bags!) show up on my page repeatedly is starting to trigger feelings of intense irritation. And I’m disappointed, because I thought that after all this time, I’d feel nothing toward him, and instead I find myself getting angry. It’s disappointing to get an alert saying that an employer’s looked at your profile, and it turns out to be an ex-boyfriend.

It’s almost embarrassing to see, really. If he wanted to be nonchalant about it, he’d just send a network invite, maybe throw in a shitty explanation that he “stumbled across my profile”, but instead he’s just stalking it every few weeks like a creepy little weirdo, possibly unaware that I can see he’s doing that. Not only that, but his profile pic is of him and (I assume) his wife, which is really strange for a professional website. I get that not everybody has a picture of themselves alone, but just crop it so it only shows your face. This isn’t facebook. If your spouse isn’t famous, there’s no reason to show them on your professional profile. Is he trying to show me that he’s still married, and make me feel like I missed out? Cause all I can think is “My god, that poor woman. Does she know that her husband once tried to masturbate a cat?”

Anyway, that’s my rant. My feelings have been switching between irritation, secondhand embarrassment, and mild amusement over it, and writing this rant has helped. Thanks for reading.

Have any of my fellow queens had to deal with something like this?

UPDATE: I blocked him. Here’s how to set your viewing settings to private and block someone on LinkedIn (a few commenters sent instructions for both of these, but I’d figured I’d make a post with everything in one place).