Weddingbee Blog

This is a sticky subject with us too! My fiance has never had another girlfriend (!! I know - he comes with no bad habits :)) so it’s not an issue for him… but I had a very serious 5-year relationship before being with him. I can’t stand the thought of throwing away all the pictures and letters from that relationship - it would be like throwing away a huge part of my “growing up time.” When I first realized that my fiance and I were getting serious, I put them all in a box and sent them to my grandmother for safe-keeping. I’m not sure what I’ll do with them if they ever come back around to me… I guess I’ll deal with it then!

The same thing happend to me - but you acted a lot calmer….We were moving out of his old apartment and I opened this shoebox and there were about 100 pictures of just him and his ex. I showed him and he threw them. Then I cried for about 5 hours because I felt like he was hiding them from me but he says that he didn’t even know it was there. I then went home and threw out all the stuff I had from my exes because I don’t want him to feel the same way I did if he found it….

Tristan, if that isn’t the funniest comment I’ve heard today, ” what am I going to do hang them up!”. That made me and my fi have a good laugh. Your bf/fi shoots out pretty good ones!

I couldn’t care less about his old pictures…that’s his past, and he’s in a different place now, but that’s part of his history. I don’t care if he keeps things. I have all my old pictures too, and I’m not getting rid of them simply because they aren’t my relationship now, and especially because most of them are group pictures with a lot of my past friends and memories.

I don’t see most of my ex’s regularly (maybe once every year or so), but I’m still on friendly terms with them. He hates his, though, so I could see how he might feel differently about old photos.

Another random thought: do you ever think your children might want to see the pictures one day, if you have kids? My mom has a few pictures of herself with people she dated before my dad, and I used to love looking at how my mom looked in those, and seeing that moment in time. One of the guys was a total rocker guy, too, and that was so unlike my dad that it was kind of cool to see another side of what mom had liked.

my bf deleted, threw out all the pics of him and his ex early on. i actually went through a shoe box full of letters last nite and threw them all out. not just from ex’s but friends too. to me, it’s like sure there are memories in there and it helped me to be the person i am now, but what’s the point? like the person above said, what are you going to frame/hang them up? you just go on and create new ones with the fiance/husband.

I have very few reminders of my exes, the ones that remain are usually something you can’t rip out - like a yearbook page. Otherwise I’ve thrown just about everything out. I don’t even have their old address or telephone #s. My fiance on the other hand keeps EVERYTHING. Every little note, gum wrapper, card he has kept and feels they important to him. Luckily, they are at his father’s house in the attic. We don’t have room to store anything but when we have a house he can bring everything else into our home (old college texts, yearbooks, toys) except that box.

I don’t have an issue because my boyfriend and I both did not have serious relationships with anyone else before we started dating. However, neither of you should feel guilty for keeping them because they are a part of your past, and they are a part of who you are today. You would not be this person without going down the roads you did. It would only be wrong for you to want to go back to that time or to be with that person again, because you would not only be lying to your FI but yourself.

I don’t have any to speak of, and neither does the hub.

I’m sorry to say this, but that’s totally bogus of you to hold onto yours when your FI dumped his memorabilia. Trash them. It’s only fair.

Thanks for your comments everyone, its definitely helped me to understand other women’s opinions and personal takes on the above blog.

For me, I wasn’t trying to hide nor keep all of my old photos & letters from him - he knew I had them and even looked at a few photos just in passing while we were dating a long time ago. After seeing him throw away his memorabilia, this made me want to throw mine away too but on my own time. He threw away everything so quickly without a second look and I wasn’t ready to do that. I had so much to do that day, that was the last thing I was concerned about.

Like I mentioned above, I adore looking at old photos whether it be of my young mom, my sister in her bowl haircut, or of me with corduroy overalls with cookies in hand - i love it, its nostalgic and thats why I love to keep them. I honestly don’t think its about my ex’s, its about me and wanting to remember the details that I so easily forget. I keep all of my school yearbooks, artwork, birthday cards, movie stubs with my fiance, my fiance and my airplane tickets, i even kept a leaf while me and my FI walked through Central Park, everything man….what can i say - i am a sentimental maniac!

I do plan on cleaning out my photo albums, letters, etc but I will do it when I have the time and at my own pace.

I asked my fiance about it and he says he doesn’t mind it if I keep it or if I wanted to throw it away. He said he’s not jealous or concerned about me keeping old photos. He said he’s not the jealous type so I can do whatever makes me happy. He’s still laughing from Tristan’s BF/FI comment. -)

If they have meaning for him, I don’t mind him keeping them. It’s the stuff I’m pretty sure doesn’t have meaning for him, but he keeps because it isn’t really worth giving away, but feels wasteful to throw away that bugs me, like the Jamacian troll doll a roommate got at a yard sale & gave to him. Old photos don’t take up much space, nor do they stare at me from his bookshelf.

Yeah, I have “ex” stuff, but only from the ones worth remembering. A few months ago an old photo turned up on my dresser, and I said to mr. mouse, “Where’d that come from?” It was my first serious boyfriend and apparently it’d fallen out of a book I hadn’t read since high school. I musta looked sheepish, but mr. mouse just said, “I put it there so it wouldn’t get damaged. Not sure where you want it.” I can’t imagine tossing all those memories into the trash, especially when it’d seem almost vindictive- as if by dissapointing me or not working out or through my own fickleness they no longer deserved a place in my memory. The fact that it ended doesn’t make it less or more than it was. Then again, I still have friendship bracelets from the 3rd grade.