Relationships
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Re: Pictures of His Ex
Before our marriage, my husband and I purged all letters and pictures of our exes, simply out of respect for each other. We also don't talk about certain things out of respect. Neither of us is really jealous but we felt that our exes have no place in our futures.
For your situation, I would be mature and honest and sensitive, and tell him that the pictures and letters makes you feel uncomfortable. If he doesn't want to get rid of them, ask him to put them in a box somewhere you can't see them on a regular basis. If he wants to go through them by himself, that's on him. But out of respect for your feelings he does need to put them away. I think that's an easy compromise.
I have all my photos from my old relationships and they are accessible on my computer and in a drawer of photos with pictures of family, childhood, my husband and I - I don't discriminate the relationship photos at all. They are part of my past and I celebrate that. When I decide to look at photos I look at the ones of old relationships along with the others.
I had a similar situation to your husband, I was with one of my exes for a year and a half, then we broke up, then some time after that he died suddenly of asthma. I was already dating my husband by then and they had met, when my husband and I got married my ex's family were at the wedding and in fact my ex's dad conducted the ceremony. My ex was a photographer and I have a photo he took on the wall in our livingroom and there is a small Eiffel tower model on a shelf of ornaments that I bought on holiday with my ex in Paris. Sometimes I see our mutual friends and we talk about him. Last year on the anniversary of his death I put a photo of myself with my ex as my facebook profile picture.
Apart from the ex who died I only had one other serious relationship and that guy was also at our wedding with his mother and sister.
Part of the reason I love my husband is that he accepts everything about who I am. I ended my past relationships for a reason and I have never loved anyone like I love my husband, but that doesn't mean that I don't think fondly of my exes and my time with them or that I want to cut them and all memories of them out of my life. My husband would never ask me to justify why I want to keep a photo or ask me to explain my feelings about it because he trusts the love that we have together. I think you should trust your husband more too.
You burned old love letters? Why? That was a part of your life, a significant part, that you expect people to just turn off and forget? I'm just shaking my head at this.
You are competing... with a dead woman. Trust me, you're winning.
His ex... they didn't just break up. They broke up and then she died. She actually died. A woman that he did love and had feelings for and shared a significant part of his life with. His friends all know her (and who cares how?) and she died. Is there an acceptable quota in this situation of pictures that someone can hang on to to reminisce?
What harm does it do to you if he has photos of her on his laptop? Unless he is sitting there, night after night either crying into a bucket of hagen daaz over these photos and proclaiming his ever lasting love to her memory or worse, masterbating to them on a nightly basis before crawling into bed - you are coming off as pretty crazy.
You expect people to delete photos out of spite and BURN things from their past. I just cannot get over that.
Here is what a normal, rational person could do in this situation:
Talk to your husband, calmly and respectfully. No judgement. Just a "hey, I've noticed that this girl has been coming up quite a bit lately in conversation and photos and things... is everything alright? Are you alright?" Let him talk about it with you, his partner in life, openly. Be there for him, not jealous. This is NOT about you.
Suggest that you guys do something together to honor her memory, like taking flowers to her grave (you don't need to compete with a dead woman) and don't make it about you. Make it about supporting him through grief that has reared up again over the loss of someone important to him. Tell him that you understand why he keeps the photos and of course you wouldn't want him to destroy them (because you are a sane, rational person remember) but it's sometimes hard for you to feel like he is hanging on to someone else. Open up that conversation for him to then tell you how he feels about that, how he views it and he will most likely make the suggestion himself that he puts these things away, including the prom picture in the dresser.
Chronically hilarious - you'll split your stitches!
I wrote a book! Bucket list CHECK!
http://notesfortheirtherapist.blogspot.co.uk