So a couple days ago, I (21F) was at a bar with my boyfriend (25M) and he was looking through my pictures and saw that I still have photos of my ex (who is blocked and he knows I have no feelings for) which upset him so he said he was going to text his ex for her to send back all their pics he deleted. He told me the next day that she said I’m a joke (although she cheated on him throughout their entire relationship) and that he should leave me. I asked to see the texts and he adamantly refused, then deleted the whole text conversation whilst I was on the phone after I said it was important to me to see what he really said.
I keep old photos as they were good memories, I have no contact with my ex whatsoever but now I’m not sure how out of order it is to have them. None the less I feel like my bf is lying to me about what he said to his ex and I’ve lost a lot of trust for him. The problem is we live together so I want to sort it out somehow.
Honestly just break up. That’s it. Don’t sink more
time into a bad relationship just because you moved in together.
Did you two talked deleting photos of exes prior to this?
He’s unhinged if he is texting his ex and trying to make you feel insecure or jealous.
Does he think that back in the old days people tore open their photo albums and ripped old photos in half to cut out every ex? This man has some maturity issues.
Wow this exact thing happened with my bf and his photos and we just had a talk about it and I said it bothered me to see those albums so front and Center and he apologized profusely and put them away somewhere
You’re 21. You’re not married, you have no kids.
There’s not really any reason to be trying to salvage a shitty tit-for-tat relationship, where you both have no trust and want to see texts to exes.
I disagree with people saying you did anything wrong. Just because a relationship didn’t work out and you no longer have feelings for someone doesn’t mean that the memories associated with those photos can’t be positive and important.
Your boyfriend is a petty, insecure, and little man. He is still somewhat young and may grow out of this, but I wouldn’t blame you for not wanting to stick around and wait and see. If I were you, I would break up with him. I obviously don’t, however, know much about your relationship. Only you can decide, but, regardless of what you choose to do, you are absolutely right to be upset by this.
Sounds like a really healthy, mature relationship. Totally no issues here.
So he was going through your phone, found some photos of your ex you hadn’t deleted yet, then texted his ex out of spite and *supposedly* she said you were a joke (but he won’t let you see what either of them said).
Ooof.
It’s fair for him to be upset about that, but his reaction was childish and way overboard.
both are in the wrong in my opinion.
I wouldn’t feel comfortable my partner keeping pictures of their ex. it feels like you’re not really over them and so you’re hanging onto a piece of them. if you’ve blocked them and have no feelings for them why do you need the pictures?
But he’s really immature, overreacting and almost certainly lying to hurt you because he’s annoyed at you.
Digging into eachother’s phone, in the first place is disrespectful thing to do imo. You have to respect eachother’s space to protect your individualism. You can have a say in what you should keep in your phone and not. At the same time, you should be ok with what he keeps in his phone. If you both feel sus and can’t trust eachother with what you offer to eachother, probably it’s not going to work.
He probably was jealous and to make you feel the same way he spoke to his ex-gf. It wasn’t right on his part either.
Honestly, I would be pissed if my girl had pics of her ex on her phone. On the flip side, it’s VERY petty of him to reach out to his ex. Someone that petty shouldn’t have to be dealt with. Get rid of the guy. He seems like he is only going to cause a headache to you in the future..
I dont understand the need for pics of an ex on a phone. Idc if it was a good memory, are you going to scroll back to it occasionally to relive that memory? He’s not even a friend anymore. I don’t keep any pics of my ex’s on my phone or anywhere out of respect for my wife. She is my future, they are my past and are irrelevant.
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Were the pictures of your ex nudes or lewds? You should always delete nudes/lewds after a relationship ends. If they weren’t those, were they group photos with other friends in them? Pictures of romantic dates? How often are you revisiting these old photos in your camera roll? How long ago did you and your ex break up? Why did you block your ex?
Regardless, your boyfriend is too old to be acting so petty. Reaching out to an ex out of spite instead of having an adult conversation about how he feels isn’t it.
Since you want to make it work, you both need to talk about how you both feel (why you kept the photos assuming they aren’t sexual, if you keep photos of all of you exes or just him, why your current bf doesn’t want you to keep the photos, how he feels about the situation/if he deletes all pictures of his exes, how often you are scrolling through your camera roll remembering the past relationship, how you felt when your bf reached out to his ex, why he sought out revenge instead of communicating his feelings, what exactly they spoke out, etc.). Seems like trust was broken on both ends, so you would have to work together to figure out how to repair it for both of you.
You live together, is it an official lease? Or are you still able to leave at any time?
i feel like you did something maybe a tiny bit wrong and he just like went and did something 100000000x more wrong
I would not want to live with him anymore im a 22 female and my bf is 25 and i have some pics of my ex that he has seen and he knows i hate my ex and i just delete them as they appear on my snap memories
like someone ur living with is going and texting his ex who is talking shit on u… ur roommate/bf doesnt have ur back it sounds like im sorry to say
Thats an awful lot of childish drama coming from a 25 year old man.
A new partner demanding that I delete all evidence of my past would be a dealbreaker by itself for me. Being spiteful and then potentially lying to you about how far he took that spite just compounds it.
Don’t stay in a bad relationship just because you live together. It’ll be hard to extricate yourself, but it’s better than being stuck forever.
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Hmm.. From how you are describing it, it sounds like you guys had an agreement to delete these pictures? or atleast talked about it?
Regardless, I have a few pictures on facebook of old girlfriends, I don’t really care about them, they are just there.. if my girlfriends had a problem with it tho, I’d just delete it, as I have no attachment to it whatsoever.
I always make decisions like this in relationships by asking myself “Does this rob me of anything?” if not, then I don’t mind..
With the wisdom of middle age I can assure you that you should NEVER stay with someone who would go out of their way to deliberately spite you instead of communicating properly like a rational adult. He wanted to hurt you, and he did, over something this small? What lengths will he go to in order to hurt you over something larger? It’s not worth it love, pack up your stuff and have some respect for yourself. You can do far far better than this man.
It depends, did he delete the pictures of his ex voluntarily or did you tell him you wanted him to delete them. If you told him to delete his pictures yet kept yours then you are a hypocrite and deserve his behavior. If not then he is in the wrong.
I have deleted most photos with my exs because I think it is a good way to move on after the relationship has ended and respectful for when I am in a future relationship too. My partner still has all pictures on social media and on their phone, which I don’t necessarily like, but can’t really do anything about that, especially the lovey ones, at the same time, it’s not a deal breaker for me.
The way your boyfriend reacted was not ok. I feel like he probably never texted his ex and is making it up, but thats also super fucked up. I usually say to talk about thingd, but I don’t know in this case, it sounds like a big red flag that he reacted that way without trying to have a talk first.
He is right to be upset. But his behaviour after that is not the one what he should do. If you are in a new relationship, it is not healthy to keep the ex’s photos. It should be talked before it is an issue. If both sides are okay with that, then there’s no problem.
It’s one thing for him to feel insecure about it and discuss that with you. It’s another thing to hit up his ex and have a whole conversation spiting you and essentially talking shit about you to his ex. Little man behavior. You deserve better.
I read half of this and almost vomited. Kick this asshole to the curb and move on to an adult relationship. If you stay with this dude, either you like being used and abused or just plain dumb. Escape this dude
he definitely said stuff he wasn’t supposed to say u should break up
Your BF sounds absolutely toxic. While the type of pictures may matter in terms of whether you should have them, his reaction is completely unhealthy and quickly approaching abusive.
Set boundaries.
It’s YOUR phone, YOUR private space, where YOU decide, not your bf.
Furthermore, like other commenters mentioned, those are memories of your life, YOUR life, not your boyfriends. If you are comfortable with those pictures, you can do with them whatever you like.
In my opinion, partners, who are uncomfortable with random bits of evidence of any ex-partners, have issues with their own self-esteem, and project that onto their surroundings. That in turn creates mistrust and can be the beginning of more toxic behaviour.
Other than that, writing his ex as a reaction, like if he felt he needed to “make things even”, seems very childish to me, like instead of working on a solution and talk about it, he instead decided to take some kind of revenge to feel superior. That’s how he deals with conflicts, when confronted with an opinion that is not his own. You can expect to have very exhausting and irrational fights in your future. That itself, would be a dealbreaker for me.
tldr: Don’t feel bad. Your boyfriend sounds very immature and insecure to me.
It’s a bad situation for you either way. Either he lied about what was said in the convo with his ex (and now you’ll never know for sure ) and even if he was telling the truth, then his reaction to being upset about some old pictures was to text his ex and start a conversation with her that somehow ended in her saying he should leave you. What exactly did he say to her to prompt her to say that ? He must have said something to get her to say that, if she actually did.
It’s really messed up either way. Please be careful, OP. This sounds manipulative and controlling, and it was his decision about how to handle some insecure emotions he was having. He tried to blame you for how he felt instead of confronting his own feelings. People like this have the potential to be abusers ( emotionally at the least ) if they don’t figure themselves out.
I’m betting here that the bf said all of that out of spite and never actually texted his ex. Think about it, if he was bold enough to both tell you this and do this there would be no reason to delete the conversation. He said he deleted it because it never existed. He’s hoping that by experiencing something similar, you’d have some sort of empathy for what he’s going through. The lack of trust you feel now is the exact lack of trust he’s built and building knowing you are keeping old photos of your ex because of good memories. Your lack of trust also means part of what he’s attempting to do is working, now comes the part where you have to look in the mirror and see if you care that he feels that way. If not, then you know what to do and it may be for the best for both of you in this situation.
Even if you have no feelings for your ex now, memories are a funny thing. After a while the bad things will fade away and you somewhat forget how bad the bad things were. Eventually you may end up in a situation and you won’t know exactly how you got there. Your bf knows this and knows how it will end. In the end, ask yourself how would you feel if instead of him doing what he said he did to get his ex’s pictures back, he instead did just have pictures of his ex. And every time he looked at them it was for the sole purpose of remembering the good times he had with her.
You both are wrong. He reacted in a very stupid way but don’t be having pictures of your ex (whom you have blocked) on your phone and say it was for good memories.