wtf? Is it normal to cling on to love letters from your last girlf?

Hmm....I've been with my boyfriend for nearly a year. We have known each other for ages and ages. He was in a relationship and then told me he had feelings for me. He broke it off with her not long after and we eventually got together.

I'm completely confident about how he feels for me...or was....
I've just come back from working abroad because I missed him so much and I'm crashing in his flat for the time being. He told me to tidy things up and make room for my stuff, which I did.
And then...
I found a box with his ex-girlfriend's name on it (as in it had once been posted to her) and thought 'hmm...okay...maybe he's just using it for storage....'
It's not stuffed away in some little corner either. It's the first box you see when you look under the bed. You have to pull it out to get to other boxes.
Inside, hidden underneath a few books were old love letters, photos and birthday cards to and from his ex, as well as birthday cards to her from her friends and family (?).
I don't get it. I mean, I'm not denying he had feelings for her when they were together. I was totally in love with my last boyfriend and thought we'd be together forever. It's just...I don't have anything belonging to my previous boyfriends, because it doesn't mean anything to me now and I'm with the guy of my dreams. Anything I felt for my last bf is gone, as have all the bits and pieces of letters and photos.
He broke it off with his last girlfriend, and always tells me how he never felt truely happy with her and just wanted to be with me, and was jealous when I had boyfriends and so he finished it because of this.

I've been on the otherside of the world for 6 months, enough time for him to consider and really get rid of this box.

The letters were just as intimate as the letters he sent me whilst I was abroad. He wrote me songs, turns out he did that for her too.

I don't know what to do. If I confront him, he'll think I was snooping. I was simply doing what he said I could do.

I'm so confused, because he's currently going through interviews to get a job in the country where i was working so we can go back and live there together.

One of my guy friends says it's kinda normal cos he still has old cards and stuff and it probably doesn't mean that much to him, it's just a few memories.

oh bleh.....

Cling?

It's not healthy.

But keep?

That's normal.

What frasbee said.
You're just being insecure.

These momentos represent a part of his life. Unless he is taking them out and reading them daily, leave it alone or you will piss him off for being controlling, insecure, and also for snooping.

For the record, I have photos of me with my first boyfriend somewhere in the back of my closet - they are more than 20 years old. I took them out a couple of years ago for my kids to see - we all had a good laugh.

Lighten up, girl.

I agree with the notion to lighten up a little.

1. They were under the bed. Not strewn about his bed and freshly tear-stained.

2. They were in a box which you really had no right to snoop through. So confronting him about this will most like only spur his defenses and possibly question whether or not he wants you crashing at his place.

3. I have a lot of memorabilia from ex-boyfriends. Sweaters, scarves, figurines, a painting. Those things I love because they do mean something to me. Granted, I may have put some of it away for a time till the pain subsided, but now they are tokens. They represent a time in my life that I will always remember. I value each guy I've dated as a learning experience that has made me into the awesome woman I am now.

If a current boyfriend questions where I got something, I give them the truth. I don't launch into a detailed history of the object, but I do let them know why I find it meaningful. Either they will be okay with it, or they won't. They can pick.

I think keeping them in a box under the bed is appropriate. They're not in his underwear drawer or piled up next to his hand lotion, Don't be nutty. There are enough real things in life to worry about without creating more.

You know, there are stories about men dying and women finding photos of ex wives in their wallets. There are a lot of things men just don't bother to do that often. Like clean out their wallet, or throw away that box of old girlfriend crap.