Pictures: do you get rid or keep them?

[Before you can make things better, you have to stop making them worse...]

I have been talking to friends/people who have experienced break-ups.  The consensus seems to be to delete all the pictures of my ex because she cheated on me and doesn't deserve to be in my "vault" so to speak.  Some have said, to keep just one photo that's my favorite.  

I am struggling with this. She was very photogenic and liked the attention of getting her picture taken.  So even though they are in a digital vault box and i don't look at them everyday etc. I know they are there.  Sometimes when i am down i am tempted to look at them and sulk.   Therefore, deleting them would keep me from doing this?  I've unfriended her from fb so i can't see her there anymore.

But because this was no ordinary break up or because we (people on here) feel an intensity to our former partners, i wonder what many of you have to say about this?  

For me, deleting her almost feels like surgically removing a part of me that existed and it's hard to do surgery on oneself.   I wish i didn't feel this way but she was a significant part of my life.  

When i have glanced at the pictures it brings back those old feelings. I wonder then if she deleted my photos etc.  I tell myself that she probably has; because i was insignificant to her in her life.  That i meant nothing to her.  I get gloomy when i think about that.   And then strangely a part of me hopes that she is happy with the new guy.  

this melancholy experience doesn't seem healthy for me.  But bottom line- deleting the pictures in digital land will not stop the pictures in my mind.   So that is why i was curious what those of you have done.

[truthbeknown]

I have been talking to friends/people who have experienced break-ups.  The consensus seems to be to delete all the pictures of my ex because she cheated on me and doesn't deserve to be in my "vault" so to speak.  Some have said, to keep just one photo that's my favorite.  

I am struggling with this. She was very photogenic and liked the attention of getting her picture taken.  So even though they are in a digital vault box and i don't look at them everyday etc. I know they are there.  Sometimes when i am down i am tempted to look at them and sulk.   Therefore, deleting them would keep me from doing this?  I've unfriended her from fb so i can't see her there anymore.

But because this was no ordinary break up or because we (people on here) feel an intensity to our former partners, i wonder what many of you have to say about this?  

For me, deleting her almost feels like surgically removing a part of me that existed and it's hard to do surgery on oneself.   I wish i didn't feel this way but she was a significant part of my life.  

When i have glanced at the pictures it brings back those old feelings. I wonder then if she deleted my photos etc.  I tell myself that she probably has; because i was insignificant to her in her life.  That i meant nothing to her.  I get gloomy when i think about that.   And then strangely a part of me hopes that she is happy with the new guy.  

this melancholy experience doesn't seem healthy for me.  But bottom line- deleting the pictures in digital land will not stop the pictures in my mind.   So that is why i was curious what those of you have done.

[stixx44]

I totally understand how you feel.  At the beginning I moved all of her photos into a folder that wasn’t so readily available.  I did not glance at them but still knew they were there.

When I felt a bit stronger, I deleted them all.  I don’t want to see photos of her looking happy with me, as I now feel it was all an illusion.

I feel better having done that.

You may get to that point or not.  You’ll know when the time is right.

I wish you peace.

Stixx

[Shawnlam]

My gf (ex) cheated on me as well .Oddly I kept all the pictures on my iCloud Drive and I’m not sure if I will keep them or not yet

[bus boy]

I hung on to things for a while until someone told me I shouldn't be hanging on to negative energy. No one created more pain and negative energy in my life than Xw did. I took there advice and fired all xw's pics and other items she left in the garbage and every time I run into something of xw's I fire it in the garbage or the wood stove.

[introvert]

All the answers above are good. Do NOT keep them or any other object where you might run into them unintentionally.

[Mutt]

I backed up all of her pictures on an external drive 5 years ago which reminds my I should move it to a second drive to have another back up. You might be thinking that you’re going to feel different one day and you might regret that you got rid of the pictures because you were emotionally raw.

That was my train of thought so I backed them up out of sight out of mind. We have kids this was ( always will be in their minds ) their family I wanted to keep them for them in the future.  

I’ve saw some old YT videos that I uploaded about 5 years ago the kids were babies and my frame of mind is different today I see it differently I see someone that was impulsive and attached herself too quickly to someone that want a good match ( myself ) That’s my story all of our stories are different.

I agree with the others move it to a folder, back it up a hard drive upload it to the cloud so they are stored out of sight and if one day you feel like you can look at then and they’re not going to cause a great deal of pain then peek.

[Starfire]

I treat it just like any other past relationship.  It happened.  He was part of my life.  That's my history.  Deleting the pictures won't delete that part of my life.  I can't edit it out as if I was editing a novel.

I don't have to look at them or dwell on them.  Sometimes I want to as part of grieving, and I'm glad to have them.  Sometimes I want to remember the actual good times, and I'm glad to have them.

Interestingly, this sort of thing was a trigger for my ex.  At one point he demanded that I edit 10 years of Facebook and YouTube to remove any picture or comment or mention of any prior relationship I had ever had.  Maybe that's why I'm so adamant now about not editing him out because I refused back then to edit out anyone else.

[Skip]

I'd archive them. And put the archive out of regular reach - maybe a thumb drive.

I suspect you will find yourself going back, on occasion, and you will process them.  You may print some and put in a scrape book - you may toss the drive in a fire.

You are too raw now and getting rid the anything is irreversible.

Cut yourself a break... .its not a decision you need to make.

[SWLSR]

I have to agree with consensus out them out of your sight until you are more healthy then make a decision.  I saved some of my family pictures and my children are glad I did. 

[truthbeknown]

i have them backed up to my dropbox but my dropbox app is on my phone which makes it too easy to look at.  However, i have to say that since i have unfriended her from fb i really have shifted and don't look at my drop box archive that much.  The other thing that i did was to delete all the pictures that were taken after the first breakup and before the recycle.  The big shift was when she got off anti-depressants and so i have saved all the photos that were from the time period from before then and deleted the ones that were after that period.  My thinking is that, the ones before she got off meds were the of the women that i fell in love with and the ones after that were pics of a very different lady. 

So in essesnce, i feel like the woman that i know died (energetically) at that point where the drugs that kept her in check were drained out of her system. 

I know we can never go back because whoever she is now doesn't know who i am and doesn't probably have a memory of why she loved or cared or lusted for me in the beginning.  Since we weren't married and didn't have children it's different then the memories that some of you guys have but for me it was still an intense love and an intense period of my life.  Thanks for sharing your thoughts. 

[Cromwell]

What do they do in countries where a despised formerly loved charlatan dictator has been installed.

destroy every monument, picture, artifiact associated with them

my ex BPD was perfect to me in terms of attractiveness, she still is, and looking back it was the first hook but it was also a continual hook.

I told her whilst still with her (but towards the end) that "btw every picture of you is deleted".

she then rushed and put them all up on facebook that she had,

so the answer is, i will never look at her facebook.

its made things hugely easier to detach, as Stixx has mentioned, the pictures are supposed to be happy memories but im looking at them with a different mindset than the time they were taken.

Interestingly the best pictures of her were ones she had taken herself. Interesting because the ones I took, despite at the time I thought were beautiful and encapsulated a happy day together, I looked closer and could see the downturned edges of the edge of her lips, a sign of someone masking depression or tension with a smile. her photos on fb make her appear like a model, but she could take literally hundreds of pictures of herself before finally choosing one to post.

I also felt unnerved that the pictures i had of her (printed ones) I came back to once and found red pen lines drawn over things like her eyes or mouth. So I cant look at those pictures again without remembering that.

its bad enough I have some strong memories to deal with post relationship, pictures would only serve to trigger more.