I Found My Ex’s New Girlfriend On Venmo

There are plenty of places you might come across your ex and their new girlfriend: perusing the farmers market, your old favorite tapas spot, or even at a mutual friend’s (very awkward) gathering. No matter the place, the visceral reaction remains the same. Upon seeing them together, you turn to your friend and whisper “Is that her?” You both speculate until you get the confirmation you need — a brush on the shoulder or a kiss exchanged between them.

Madison, 26, in Philadelphia, found her ex’s new girlfriend in a place she wasn’t expecting: Venmo. While the app is great for splitting dinner bills, it can also be surprisingly useful for revealing your ex’s new romantic connections. (FYI, hundreds of Elite Daily readers responded to an Instagram story saying they share this experience, adding things like, “Real sleuths know!” or “I love women because we do things like this.”) While it’s probably not the healthiest way to move on, it might just reveal enough intel to help you get the ick from your ex-partner.

He would always make me split the bill … so I know he was probably doing the same thing to her.

Madison’s story begins in high school when she met a girl at a part-time job stocking shelves at a beauty supply store. “She was two years older than me, from a nearby town, and was super sweet,” Madison tells Elite Daily. They were in different social circles and never got close.

Flash-forward a couple of years when Madison and her then-boyfriend broke up. He blocked her on everything — except, you guessed it, Venmo. “Probably about a year later, I accidentally stumbled upon his Venmo to that girl from the beauty supply store,” says Madison, adding that when it was a buzzy Philly restaurant’s name, she “immediately knew” they’d been seeing each other.

How? Well, because he charged her, and Madison could see that in the Venmo transaction. “He never fully paid for dinners and would always make me split the bill,” she says. “So I know he was probably doing the same thing to her.” Even though she was dating someone new, it still stung, stumbling upon information she might have never known without the app. “I even sent a screenshot of the interaction to my friend from high school who worked at the store with us to be like, ‘Oh, my God. What a small world.’”

Whether you go seeking the information purposely or — like Madison — stumble upon it and decide to investigate further, Asheville-based therapist Lindsey Brock calls sleuthing or checking up on our exes online a “self-harmy thing” that many can’t help but do. Jasmine, 23, from New York, says Venmo was a “certain kind of Internet hellhole” that she would find herself falling down because it was — in a way — the most telling.

Rather than scrolling through vacation pictures of her ex and their new partner after the fact, Jasmine could see real-time updates, like where they were or what they were eating. “When I realized I was checking to see if they paid each other for mundane things like gas on a road trip, I finally was like, ‘OK, this isn’t good for my mental health,” she says. “I need to block them.’”

That’s not the only harmful thing about a seemingly innocent refresh habit. Venmo is an incredibly elusive social media platform. Between emojis, inside jokes, word limits, and the requirement to write something, there’s a lot of room for misinterpretation. “Dinner!” doesn’t always mean “Date!” — sometimes, it means a group of friends went out and your ex was in charge of the Splitwise.

It used to go down in the DMs, but now I guess it goes down on Venmo.

Except when there’s no room for doubt and you’re fully aware of the situation at hand. Kylie, 27, from Massachusetts, became suspicious when her boyfriend of four years couldn’t attend her best friend’s wedding due to “other circumstances.” A few days later, she stumbled upon a Venmo exchange between him and another girl, confirming her suspicions that he’d been seeing someone else.

“It said something like ‘Shots at the Patriots game for you and *Insert Other Girl’s Name Here*,’” she tells Elite Daily. So, Kylie did what Internet sleuths do best: She went through his following to find the girl, and she did — along with the information needed to piece together that they’d been seeing each other for exactly two months. “It used to go down in the DMs, but now I guess it goes down on Venmo,” says Kylie. “Patriots games were always our thing, but that’s beside the point.”

No doubt, there’s a lot to be said for cutting ties with people who no longer serve us, both IRL and online. But fellow nosy, information-gatherers rejoice: There are times when digging up a little info can actually be helpful.

“It can be a reality check,” says Brock. “Being reminded of our ex’s problematic, annoying, or unhelpful patterns can help us take off our rose-colored glasses and look at the whole person — a person who was not a great fit.”

For Kylie, this sentiment rings true. Venmo gave her closure: a harsh truth but solace in knowing that she got away from someone who had been unfaithful. As for Madison? She’s just glad she dates a man who enjoys taking her out to dinner now.

Expert:

Lindsey Dortch Brock, therapist and author of After the Breakup: A Self Love Journal