Found pictures of my boyfriends ex in his wardrobe?

[helenturnock]

I've been with my boyfriend for 2 years now. We have our ups and downs but we love each other very much. We've both previously been in a long term relationship before meeting each other, his was 3 years on and off, mine was 2. I'd like to think that I'm completely over my ex, we're good friends and can hang out and speak without it being a problem or without any feelings still being present, we are really just good friends. However, it worries me that my boyfriend still speaks very maliciously about his ex, that is if he ever speaks about her (he will usually get very defensive if I bring her up).

About 8 months ago I was getting a jumper out of his wardrobe and noticed a white bin in the wardrobe full of scrumpled up paper. On top were scrumpled up pictures of him and his ex. It was a shock to find, but I ignored it and assumed that they were to chuck out since they were in a bin, or maybe he'd forgotten about them. I'd completely forgotten about this, but yesterday I was putting away some clothes in his wardrobe while he was out and noticed a new blue storage box had taken place of the bin, and in the box were the pictures, un-scrumpled.

It has really hurt me to think that he's wanted to keep these, they have messages written by her on the back about how much she loved him etc. And it also hurt me that he's obviously been looking at/reading them at some point within the last 8 months. But at the same time I am trying to understand, I know he loved her as it was his first girlfriend and it might be hard for him to part with them. But I still know that he does love me, very much, I know that he would never do anything to intentionally hurt me and he has done everything to prove that he loves me. People have to move on and grow and I can't expect him to act as if I'm his only ever girlfriend. But i just don't know how to feel about this, or how to bring it up to him.

What do you guys think? Thank you so much for any advice.

[TheEvilJester]

Has he talked to you much about his past relationship? If there was a lot of hurt in that relationship, then I don't think you can necessarily ever expect him to speak kindly of his ex. I don't personally consider that red flag/problem of any sort just in an of itself. I mean, if his ex was not very good to him, why would he ever speak kindly of her? If that were the case, why would you not understand that he'd prefer not to talk about her and any time he did it would not be anything nice. It is certainly different if those bad feelings are all-consuming.

If he's still allowing their past to hurt him, or he still dwells in his hate/hurt feelings, then that could be a problem. However, I've always personally felt that moving on and allowing yourself to get over hurt from your past does not ALWAYS mean forgiving the person who caused the hurt. You move on, you heal from what happened to you, but you should never lose the lessons you learned through it, and sometimes one of those lessons is that the person who caused that pain deserves no place in your life.

HOWEVER....

All that said, I have to admit to sharing some of your concerns based on the rest of your story. Upon seeing your thread, my gut reaction was "Maybe he honestly just forgot they were in there." However, you later found he had gotten a new container and even uncrumpled the pictures. To me, I too would be wondering why his feelings would so suddenly change that he'd actively un-mess up the pictures he'd previously hated so much that he crumpled them like trash.

Honestly, it could possibly just be that he has finally moved on fully. Perhaps his past with her no longer brings him pain and he's able to now think fondly back on the good times they had..... but still realize that they were not right for each other. After all, you yourself are able to still be friends with your ex, so surely you could understand that.

Unless you have any other reason to worry, I would personally suggest you just don't let it bother you. If you don't think you can put it out of your mind, though, I guess I would suggest just sort of lightly bringing it up. I wouldn't necessarily say you describe the whole story. I'd just say something like "I want you to know I honestly wasn't meaning to snoop, I was just getting a shirt out your drawer and couldn't help but see you still had pictures of your ex."

My suggestion would be to ask about it in such a way that you make it sound like you almost feel silly asking, but that it bothered you all the same and you just wanted to talk about it. In other words, don't come at him about it as though he's done anything wrong. You don't really know if he has. You don't want to make yourself just sound like a jealous person, because in this case you definitely aren't. I think any of us could understand your concern, and I think many of us would feel the same way. All the same, you could just be worrying over nothing, so at least until you have reason to believe otherwise, approach it as though that is exactly the case.

Good luck to you either way. I hope that helped even if just a little bit. Definitely not an easy, black and white type of situation, so I do wish you luck in deciding what you think is best.