As an ex-lover, he is still curious about what you are doing in your life.

By continuing to follow you on Instagram and watching your stories, he stays abreast of what you are doing.

This means he is carrying an emotional attachment to you that hasn’t gone away even though he is your ex-lover.

It’s unlikely he ever moved on from you.

This is especially true if you were the one who ended the relationship.

He misses what it was like to have you in his life.

By continuing to follow you on Instagram and watching your stories, he gets firsthand information in regard to whether you have moved on to a new lover.

He will detect this information based on what you post.

If he suddenly sees your stories filled with images or videos of a new guy with you in the frame, he assumes that this is your new lover.

So long as he doesn’t see this, he tells himself that there is still a possibility that you come back to him.

As an ex-lover who never wanted to be broken up with, he hangs on to this hope.

Additionally, he knows that you are seeing how frequently he comes to watch your stories on Instagram.

Thanks to this, he is intent on staying in your consciousness.

In other words, he doesn’t want you to forget about him.

By routinely watching your stories and being one of the first of your followers to do so, he wants to get into your thoughts.

When he is in your thoughts, you are thinking about the time you spent with him as your lover.

Hopefully, you are recalling good memories with him.

That time you went to a great restaurant and had the best time over hours of laughter until the restaurant had to kick you both out because it was closing time.

When you went on a trip together and did all kinds of memorable fun activities such as snorkeling, ziplining, and camping.

He wants to get back into your thoughts so that you think about the good times you had with him.

By so doing, you start missing him, and maybe, just maybe, you decide to send him a direct message asking about how he has been.

Moreover, an ex-lover that is still following you on Instagram and watching your stories is sometimes doing it out of vindictiveness.

He knows that you are capable of seeing that he watched a story you just posted.

In turn, you go to his social media to see what he has been up to.

He has built up a life that he wants you to drool over.

Since the breakup, he has been going to the gym and has lost weight and built muscle.

He looks better than he ever did when you were dating him.

To this effect, he gets to make you jealous and envious of what you are missing.

The same intent is evident when you observe that he has a bunch of photos and videos with other girls in view.

Attractive girls.

He wants you to feel jealous that these attractive women are in his life.

All of this behavior is mired in his intent for payback after having gone through a breakup with you that he never wanted in the first place.