is he a lying jerkface or am i just paranoid?

[wasted]

I've been with my boyfriend for over a year now and his ex-girlfriend has been a consistent problem for basically our whole relationship. they were friends before we met but when i started dating him he still hung on to anything she had ever given him while they were dating. pictures, cards, you name it. i let him know that it bothered me and he eventually got rid of them. he's telling me that they don't even talk anymore but i'm always finding text messages on his phone every few weeks and he'll deny it and lie every single time. i wouldn't even care if they talked really it's just upsetting that he has to lie about it. it makes me think that there's something bad going on if he has to consistently lie to me about it. what do you think?

[vashti]

People don't generally lie unless they feel they have to (unless they have some deep psychological issues). Pressuring him into getting rid of any momentos she ever gave him probably contributed significantly to his feeling he has to lie to you, and in my opinion, was a big mistake on your part. Like it or not, the things he kept represented a very real part of his life, and he shouldn't have been nagged into getting rid of them (although as a matter of consideration, he should have put them away in a box in the back of the closet or something). People should not be expected to throw away pieces of their life.

I don't know if anything is going on or not. A phone call every few weeks, while annoying, is certainly not proof anything is going on.

[Tiay]

vash beat me to it.

How are things in your relationship in general?

[wasted]

things in our relationship are great otherwise, we never fight over anything else except this. i wouldn't mind but the things i found were really bad like naked pictures and she even wrote him a poem telling him how much she loved him while we were together. i guess it's just my own feelings of awkwardness that are the most over powering

[vashti]

You said he hung on to things she gave him when they were *dating*. It seems you are changing the story up a bit now, and I'm not sure what to make of it. Obviously these new bits of info will change the way people will answer you. I wonder why you neglected to tell us they were *nude* photos and that she was giving him things after the two of you got together. Those seem like important details - too important to leave out of your initial post.