Keeping pictures of your ex?

It's difficult to say in my opinion...

What I think is right: deciding according to your feelings, if the pictures trigger negative emotions, you should most likely get rid of them. When you enter a new relationship, I think it would be wise to get rid of most of them at least. It's not wrong to go back once in a while to remember what was, but it's bad to dwell on the past and stay attached (and that's kind of unfair towards your new partner).

What I actually do: I have thousands of uncatalogued pictures (not only relationship-related, both on my computer and phone), even though I didn't have a bad breakup, looking at the pictures makes me remember the good times we had, which makes me sad, so I'd rather delete most of them, but sorting through the pictures would probably be too uncomfortable, so most likely I'll just delete the whole folder one day.

Actually, the worst part is that I'm a shy person and avoid cameras like the plague, but my partner wanted pictures all the time >.<
Seeing those makes me even more uncomfortable ._.

I just prefer to keep their skin tbh

I voted for "I don't have a girl/boyfriend and never had one." tho I read OP post after voting and...

And no, I'm not just asking for 'lewd' pictures, but pictures in general. Hell, it doesn't even need to be pictures only but e.g. chats, mementos and such.

Oh well when I had tons of free time (so highschool / beginning of university) I used to re-read past convos over and over again with people I thought I was close to. For no particular reason, just to read them I guess? Happily I don't have time right now and I was able to defeat this creepy-me phase, so I deleted convos with ppl I'm not talking anymore and we were on bad terms at the end.

Feels good, as it was pointless to constanly remind myself what I did wrong, what I could do better or why I was angry at someone.

Erm, when entering my answer I had no idea this will be revealed as the one with most votes... actually I expected it to be the one with lowest numbers.

Now I just need to pretend you all that voting this "forever alone" option are not doing it just for fun so I can be still happy with my life.....

Or I could just say that I keep them all... in special box.. which is empty.... but still keep them all

Only dated one girl for about a year and a half, kept one nice framed picture of us together she gave me for my birthday. Reminds me of the nice times we had together watching movies together and hanging out.

I can't...

I keep all the letters, the records of confessions made and promises broken, of words that once held meaning and now only remain as empty vessels of a faded feeling. The paper is already yellowed, the ink is fading and the writing almost illegible and washed away by tears that have long since dried. The wax seals are hardened and flaky, dried rose petals fall out from the torn envelopes, crumbling at the touch like my slowly disintegrating memory. The momentary bliss of shared laughter contained within rings in a poignant echo, only to be forever subsumed by the inexorable march of time and the vastness of empty space. What remains are but imperfect vestiges of what was another time and another life.

I read the letters for a final time, before I burn them in a fire, scatter their ashes to the winds and return home to kiss my wife and tell her I love her.

Some of this stuff is kinda, you know, made up. The very very last part is very much true, though :)

None/multiple of the above? I have a handful of pictures of exes, but they are all of something else as well, so I've kept them for the rest of the photo. There are other 'ex' photos that are long gone. I don't go through the old photos I have and reminisce, either.

After reading through mostly everything there is one thing I never managed to understand that I see it's quite dominant here as well. Seeing as how we have so many people here from so many different backgrounds and cultures it makes it a perfect opportunity to ask this, see how it differs or not from the answers the people in my life have given me.

I understand getting rid of them because they take you to a bad place in your mind but here have been quite a few people that said they'd destroy/throw out anything related to their ex to avoid a fight with, be respectful or simply appease their current partners. So my question is why is this reaction to this kind of thing the "normal" one? Don't you find a jealousy fit over old stuff to be an indication of something deeper, namely lack of trust from the other person?

I keep pictures of my axe. Is that normal?

I never delete stuff, and it's fucking making me angry/sad when i come across them. But i still can't delete them...

I'll let you know once I've had one and lost one. With a friend, I swung from absolutely hating their guts to wanting to be friends again.

Well deleting or keeping them strongly depends on how the relationship was.
I had 1 very nice relationship, fond feelings and pleasant memories of which I still have photos of.
And then again there were 2 relationships that had a good start but ended horribly and I didn't want to be reminded of anything about those people.
Either way those photos and videos, mementos, chats mustn't have too much influence on your daily life and emotional state!

I have very few photographs of me or anyone else. I see no reason to dispose of any that I do have and in fact, I recently contacted an ex-girlfriend to ask if she had any photographs from our trip to Japan, since I don't know what happened to my copies. I've never had nude photographs of a girlfriend and don't expect that I ever will.

Keep the pictures, sell the gifts!

View attached image.

I delete almost everything. Ill keep group pics, but more personal ones get deleted. My last couple serious relationships ended pretty badly, and arent something I want to be reminded of. As in, my most recent ex had this habit of finding every and any excuse to put me down (my hobbies, my weight, my dyed bangs, the way I dress, etc). And the one before him was so paranoid Id get bored and leave, that he tried to poke holes in our condoms (and a mutual friend ratted him out thank god), then when I left him because of that, he started stalking me.

So... yea. I delete almost everything.

I've never really thrown anything away, but I certainly have "packed" things away, out of both sight and mind. Not so much for myself but It seems unfair to my current partner my fiancee currently to have those mementos be such a large, or prominent part of my life.

Wait, do you keep mine?

30% never had gf? wow...

don't delete my pics bb =3=

kidding aside, depends on the memories associated I suppose

if it was something serious i keep one picture. exactly one. usually the one i liked best or something that had some sort of meaning back then.
i can't tell why but it's just how i roll. maybe to remind me that it actually happend, think about the good stuff, the bad stuff, what went wrong, all that stuff that makes you wiser...after things went to shit. if you shared your life and dreams and stuff with someone you can't just pretend it never happened.
everything else usually gets set on fire. unless it's something very useful and i can detach emotionally.

if it wasn't something serious then fuck it and throw it away.

View attached image.

delet dis

I usually keep them for a while and then get rid of them once I'm ready to move on. Most of my relationships ended in a good way (save for one that ended horrible thanks to her mother) but I prefer to keep any good memories in my well... memory... instead of having any memento that'd keep me attached to that person.
The only thing I had a hard time to get rid of was a drawing one of my exes made for me. It was hard mostly because I had the original and the drawing was quite well done.

I kept some pics of my ex on facebook, because it was a pain in the ass to delete them, but then I did removed them all first because of my new partner, and 2nd because my ex ask me to so I did. anyway, she never give me back my 1Tb hardrive and she sucks.