I have a BIG problem with ex's!

[GuyNamedBob]

Hey everyone!

 

Here's a little back story, when I was dating my ex she was obsessed with her own ex...desperately still in love. She subconsciously compared me to him and probably expected me to be him. I should have seen the warning signs (I'm ashamed to say there were plenty) and packed my bags sooner.

 

Thankfully we weren't together for a great deal of time and it didn't get too serious. But that relationship has scarred me a little bit/a lot and now I cannot stand hearing about ex's or knowing anything about them; what they look like, their name etc etc.

 

This brings me to my current dilemma, my current girlfriend and I have been dating for coming up to 2 years now and things have been great so far. But the other day in work one of the guys was facebooking her, not being fb friends he couldn't see many photos. So it didn't take long for old photos to crop up and you guessed it: photos of her and her ex.

 

I felt sick. And being the master of my own downfall that I am; I looked myself (later that night). I felt as sick as I do writing this, I'd seen enough and stopped.

 

I'm now in limbo trying to decide whether I should mention anything to my gf.

 

It bothers me, but it's just her passed. It's probably just something she hasn't thought about, but I deleted mine.

 

Their relationship didn't end on good terms, so why would she want any reminder of it. She hates him enough to delete him as a friend and throw all the physical reminders.

 

I'm not 'that' guy, the controlling boyfriend. I want to be the mature guy who says 'the past is the past, deleting photo's won't change anything'. But this is the 3rd time in a week it's eaten me up!

 

Please someone throw me a line! Tell me I'm being stupid?

 

Thanks for reading!

[1a1a]

Mountain out of a molehill. I don't delete exs from my facebook, doesn't mean I secretly hold a candle for them. You asking her to do so is going to make you sound crazy insecure.

[sonicfan287]

The important thing is that she's with you now, and as you said, she doesnt want anything to do with this ex. The photos are just on her facebook because theyre from the past. Very few people will go out of their way to remove all traces of them, unless the pictures were prominent. If she has a lot of photos in general, and these pictures with her ex are recessed somewhere deep in her albums, I don't see the cause for alarm, since it's not like she's parading them about or even "liking" them.

 

That said, I can understand where you're coming from. I haven't had the exact same issues as you but in the past, there have been "Exes" or even just "male friends" who turned out to be problematic and kind of shattered my trust (but that's neither here nor there) so I can understand the insecurity, I really can. I'm not going to tell someone not to speak up about something that's truly bothering them, but I'm just trying to give you some perspective and maybe some reasoning why there'd still be pictures of this guy

[GuyNamedBob]

Thank you both! You don't know how much it puts my mind at rest!

 

Mountain out of a molehill. I don't delete exs from my facebook, doesn't mean I secretly hold a candle for them. You asking her to do so is going to make you sound crazy insecure.

 

I'm definitely seeing it as making a mountain out of a mole hill now! My biggest fear was appearing insecure, I've had that haunting me in the past and it's not a good look Thanks for telling me straight!

 

The important thing is that she's with you now, and as you said, she doesnt want anything to do with this ex. The photos are just on her facebook because theyre from the past. Very few people will go out of their way to remove all traces of them, unless the pictures were prominent. If she has a lot of photos in general, and these pictures with her ex are recessed somewhere deep in her albums, I don't see the cause for alarm, since it's not like she's parading them about or even "liking" them.

 

That said, I can understand where you're coming from. I haven't had the exact same issues as you but in the past, there have been "Exes" or even just "male friends" who turned out to be problematic and kind of shattered my trust (but that's neither here nor there) so I can understand the insecurity, I really can. I'm not going to tell someone not to speak up about something that's truly bothering them, but I'm just trying to give you some perspective and maybe some reasoning why there'd still be pictures of this guy

 

That really does put it in perspective! Something as minute as this isn't worth the argument and risk of sounding immature and insecure! I'll also add, we dated for a short period before she was this ex, long story short: we were young and distance was an issue so we drifted apart. You'll be glad to hear I'm not going to be 'that' guy, I don't feel it bothers me enough now to mention it!

[PaintWithLight]

Why is "one of the guys" facebooking your current girlfriend? And then running to you and telling you what he discovered?

[saluk]

Out of sight, out of mind, right? I think you just preferred not to think about her past and have not yet comes to terms with the fact that she has one. And seeing the photo at a time you weren't prepared to was a very real reminder that she DOES. Just because she never thought to go through that step of deleting those photos (if she has a lot of them, she probably doesn't even remember that it's still there), doesn't mean it's something she still thinks about. So the issue here is you and the feelings of insecurity that this even has brought up. You have to come to terms with the fact that not only does she have a past, but you don't have any ownership of it. You have to let her be her own person, in the present as well as the past.

[GuyNamedBob]

Why is "one of the guys" facebooking your current girlfriend? And then running to you and telling you what he discovered?

 

We were sat talking about our partners and he wanted to put a face to the name. Nothing malicious.

 

Out of sight, out of mind, right? I think you just preferred not to think about her past and have not yet comes to terms with the fact that she has one. And seeing the photo at a time you weren't prepared to was a very real reminder that she DOES. Just because she never thought to go through that step of deleting those photos (if she has a lot of them, she probably doesn't even remember that it's still there), doesn't mean it's something she still thinks about. So the issue here is you and the feelings of insecurity that this even has brought up. You have to come to terms with the fact that not only does she have a past, but you don't have any ownership of it. You have to let her be her own person, in the present as well as the past.

 

You're right! I tried to learn from my mistakes in the past by avoiding talking about ex's. I'd bottled up a lot of those feelings up, but this thread has released a lot of that. And now I'm a lot more relaxed about the whole thing, if ex's ever crop up in conversation it won't bother me so much I'm learning, but I've made a big step in the right direction.