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Anybody know if your ex BPD saved anything from their past lovers / relationships? Mine was like a horder in this regards. She saved everything from FB messages to pics to poems she wrote etc etc. anybody else see this with their ex? Mine would go back into our FB messages and re read what I said to her as wee were talking on the phone! It was crazy the stuff she saved just in Gerneral! Anyone else?

Saving things from old relationships probably helped your ex with self esteem or identity issues and rereading FB messages between you while on the phone with you probably helped her in issues with feeling object constancy towards you.

im not sure this is abnormal. i save most things from past relationships, certainly things like pictures and poems. facebook saves messages on its own, no?

No. My ex only had one souvenir of a past relationship, a wooden picture frame that his first girlfriend had made him, and after a while he threw it out. He had very few possessions in general, only the bare essentials. His room was stark and functional. I always found that strange about him, as most people collect a few special treasures as they go through life, but he had nothing really.

I don't know if I would say save versus keep.  IME, they seem to keep stuff from past relationships like a trophy.  Anyone else experience this behavior?

Yes, mine kept some mementos of past lovers, like bottles of wine drank together, books, jewelry, and shirts.

Anyway, this is something recurrent among BPDs and it has to do with object persistence issues. Also, it is probably a way to remember the relationship they had  with us... .who knows. To some extent I think we all do this, anyway.

I think it's a women thing. I haven't kept everything but I have something from every relationship I've been in, yes. A picture, a ring, a necklace. They're just keepsakes.

YES! That's what u felt with my ex. She saved everything and I mean everything. Like Trophies! I even told her this after she ended things for good. I told her I felt she acted like some serial killer and kept things like trophies of her victims!

hmm maybe. I do remember her saying to me that she would often stare at my pictures so she could  recapture what she felt for me? I was like what? So who knows! And I also remember she would ask me something and if my answer was not 100 % what I might have said to her thru FB messages she would acuse me of lying!

I think I should maybe explain this a little better. When I say my ex saved things from past relationships it's almost like she made files on each person she suckered into a relationship with her. She saved pics to text messages to FB messages etc. yes I do k ow certain ppl do save stuff after the relationship ends but this was everything. It was almost like J Edger Hover stuff that's how crazy it was .

I tend to take too long to clean out my emails, but I purposely saved everything written from my exbp. Not due to care or a longing for her, but protection. For when she gave a smear campaign, started trouble, told lies, tried to steal people from my life, I have evidence to otherwise.

I don't want to take part in her insanity, just have evidence if needed.

As for her? She had cassette tapes, pictures, notes, all from me from 30 years ago.

I think it's a fairly normal woman thing. I kept all my texts, photos, poems and little gifts, I don't have BPD, but I couldn't  bear to let anything go that he gave me and yes, it helped me feel closer to him.

He was different in that he kept things I gave him and often sent photos of them to me, and I mean very often. In the beginning he took all my vital statistics and personal likes and logged them in his phone which felt very odd. I remember asking if it was something he usually did. Kind of like having a profile of me. He also sent me photos of a gift someone had made for him, then a few months later sent the same photo claiming it had been made more recently, so obviously if held some importance to him, and he forgot he'd already shown me.

I don't think this is a BPD thing as much as an individual quirk.  My BPD ex-wife left most of her stuff for me to get rid from our relationship.  Personally, other than things that would be valuable to my daughter (like a few photos of myself and my ex-wife from over the years), I've chucked everything.  Even then, that isn't beyond the pale, because I don't keep momentos just as a personal choice.

Interestingly enough my h insisted I erase any evidence of past relationships even high school pictures etc... .While he kept jewelry, gifts, pictures of ex girlfriends. We are in the beginning stages of divorce and I noticed he pulled some gifts from old girlfriends out of his stash. We have been together for thirty years if that tells you anything.

My stbx had a box of stuff from his ex fiance. There were all sorts of letters, pictures, and even a pair of her panties. I think it was somewhere around the two year mark that I got really angry and asked him to get rid of that stuff. How in the world could a man try to justify wanting to keep a pair of his exes panties when he was supposedly happily married?    I remember asking him about the stuff when we were dating. He dismissed it as no big deal.

I can see having a few keepsakes. I still have a teddy bear and some jewelry from exes. The teddy bear I gave to my kids. It has no sentimental value. It is was just a cute teddy bear so I gave it to my kids when it I found it. I have neutral feelings about the jewelry. If it were to disappear. it wouldn't hurt my feelings. STBX did NOT want to get rid of anything in that box that he had. There are things that my stbx has given me that I will keep because it is useful and/or cool and isn't really personal. I think a lot of how much stuff you keep depends on how long the relationship lasted. After 18 years together, it is going to be impossible to erase any and all vestiges of stuff that stbx has given me or that we bought together. It seems odd to try to erase somebody out of your life like that. On the flip side, hoarding stuff like letters and panties seems a bit excessive and creepy.