what do you do with blogposts about ex-es after the break up?

[calidaisy]

hi,

i haven''t posted anything in this forum for a very long time but i thought i''d ask the ladies here.
(and sorry this is non-wedding related).

i always thought that once you break up with someone, you should delete all email correspondences, blogposts, pictures, etc. at least in public sphere (if not also in your home computer).

my DH thought otherwise and he was "forced" to delete stuff about his past relationship(s) from his homepage when we were dating back in the days--i thought it was disrespectful to our relationship.

however, i noticed recently that a lot of people still leave stuff about ex-es on their web pages and it made me wonder whether this is the norm ... whether i was being weird/ narrow minded in feeling upset and forcing DH to delete them.

what i find hard to understand is, why some people would rather "abandon" a particular blog (while leaving pictures and stories plastered all over in cyberspace) and start a new one, than just delete stuff about their broken relationship.

i don''t know. is it me, or them? can someone explain/ side with me?

 

[LaraOnline]

I dunno what to day.
The whole 'ex' thing just makes me feel weird in any way shape or form.

I'm washing all the dishes, doing the laundry, living the lifestyle and having the kids... I don't like thinking about wild oats, lucky escapes, pregnancy scares or 'what could have been' ... it's like the exes got a free meal somehow - and I mean that about both sides of exes....

So I guess that makes me the second member of your 'weird' club!! Brits I have met are different though, they are not as family oriented (so it appears to this outsider, generally) and seem to like maintaining friendships with exes... although I know this can cause a lot of trouble as well!! All depends what sort of personality you are, and the type of community you hang out in...

 

[Pandora II]

Date: 1/13/2009 4:25:59 AM
Author: LaraOnline
I dunno what to day.
The whole 'ex' thing just makes me feel weird in any way shape or form.

I'm washing all the dishes, doing the laundry, living the lifestyle and having the kids... I don't like thinking about wild oats, lucky escapes, pregnancy scares or 'what could have been' ... it's like the exes got a free meal somehow - and I mean that about both sides of exes....

So I guess that makes me the second member of your 'weird' club!! Brits I have met are different though, they are not as family oriented (so it appears to this outsider, generally) and seem to like maintaining friendships with exes... although I know this can cause a lot of trouble as well!! All depends what sort of personality you are, and the type of community you hang out in...

LOL, sorry I had to laugh - two of my ex's are friends on Facebook, and DH and I went to stay with one last time we were in Italy... I was DH's first serious girlfriend so he doesn't have any real ex's although I have been for dinner with some of his flings.

I'm not sure about Brits being less family orientated though, I think it all depends on the individual and their circles.

If I had a blog where I moved from one relationship into another I might find that a little odd, but as far as photos, emails, letters etc, well they are just part of my past and so I keep them in a box. Ditto for DH.

My parents found a box of their 'pasts' in our attic recently and we all had a lot of fun reading through letters from ex's. One was from an Italian boy my mother had met on holiday when she was 18 - he'd written in Italian and she finally got to hear what it said when I translated it for her nearly 40 years after it was sent.

I guess it depends on whether jealousy is an issue for you or your partner.

 

[ksinger]

Date: 1/13/2009 1:00:58 AM
Author:calidaisy
hi,

i haven''t posted anything in this forum for a very long time but i thought i''d ask the ladies here.
(and sorry this is non-wedding related).

i always thought that once you break up with someone, you should delete all email correspondences, blogposts, pictures, etc. at least in public sphere (if not also in your home computer).

my DH thought otherwise and he was ''forced'' to delete stuff about his past relationship(s) from his homepage when we were dating back in the days--i thought it was disrespectful to our relationship.

however, i noticed recently that a lot of people still leave stuff about ex-es on their web pages and it made me wonder whether this is the norm ... whether i was being weird/ narrow minded in feeling upset and forcing DH to delete them.

what i find hard to understand is, why some people would rather ''abandon'' a particular blog (while leaving pictures and stories plastered all over in cyberspace) and start a new one, than just delete stuff about their broken relationship.

i don''t know. is it me, or them? can someone explain/ side with me?

I would delete it. But then I probably would have never posted anything really personal in the first place. I honestly think this may be a generational thing. Or it could just be me, I don''t know. But one could alleviate the problem in the future by simply not posting things of a genuinely personal nature in the hugely public sphere of the web.

 

[trillionaire]

I have old momentos from my ex. (I only have one) I thought at one time that I should give them all to him, since I had no real need for them, but they do transport me back to a time when I was young and innocent, creative, contemplative... it''s like going back in time. My current relationship is very different, and I like remembering the ''old me'', which has less to do with the ex and more to do with my writing

SO I still have the stuff, and I suspect that I will continue to, though I don''t have pictures of us in public places. I have NO IDEA what I would do if current SO and I broke up, we have tons of pics on FB and Myspace.

Well, that settles it. We are going to HAVE to get married, just so that I won''t have to purge my account of pics!

 

[Aloros]

I left it up. It''s waaaaaay back in my blog, it''s not all hearts and flowers anyway, and it''s a piece of my past. I don''t really care to forget my past. I definitely feel like I''ve learned from it.

FI is better for me in so many ways that I can''t imagine that he''d feel threatened!

The old photos and mementos go somewhere where neither of us will run across them on accident.

 

[musey]

Date: 1/13/2009 8:40:25 AM
Author: ksinger
I would delete it. But then I probably would have never posted anything really personal in the first place. I honestly think this may be a generational thing. Or it could just be me, I don't know. But one could alleviate the problem in the future by simply not posting things of a genuinely personal nature in the hugely public sphere of the web.

No, it's not a generational thing, it's just a pocket-group thing. Out of everyone I know, only three people keep blogs, and only two write about personal matters at all. That's .05% of my social circle

not enough to say it's a "thing" for any generation.

I would never, ever post anything personal about myself online. Facebook pages are different, because they give a very impersonal snapshot of a person, and are only shared with those that you choose (vs. public blogs).

But in the case of facebook, yes, I would likely delete photos from past relationships, at least those that look relationship-y (I would not delete, for example, group photos that included my ex). It would be for my SO's sanity or anything (because that would imply major jealousy issues), but because I wouldn't want to be publicly identified as a 'couple' with someone whom I'm not a 'couple' with. It avoids confusion ("this is your boyfriend? but I thought you were dating tommy whatshisname...").

Regardless, I don't think it's very fair to force someone to remove their old blog posts or anything like that. That's like forcing them to rip pages out of a diary, no?

I have very few mementos from past relationships - a borrowed-and-never-returned sweatshirt here, a topaz ring there... no pictures to speak of, though. I don't have an ex that I ever cared about enough for there to be jealousy issues going on.

 

[allycat0303]

Calidaisy,

I would definitely delete the stuff from facebook especially couple pictures or pictures where it is obvious you are together. I wouldn''t want the person I was with to look back on those times and compare himself with an ex. (I say this all this in theory because I don''t have ANY ex''s) Or even have any idea of what the past relationship was like. I like to think that this is one of those things that if you leave behind, it''s over.

I don''t know about blogs though, because I don''t know anyone that blogs. My guess would be if you are an extensive blogger then it would be hard to delete every mention of the person? (although I don''t even know what a blog looks like or how the search format works). Also for facebook, I have a friend who has over 700 pictures of herself tagged, and her ex is not tagged, but present in a lot of them. I think it would be pretty time consuming for her to go through each one and delete the ones that also have her ex. In her case, she just left them up. And her current boyfriend doesn''t mind a bit.

It''s kind of intresting, now you have to cyber-breakup as well as break up in real life.

 

[fieryred33143]

Date: 1/13/2009 1:00:58 AM
Author:calidaisy
hi,

i haven''t posted anything in this forum for a very long time but i thought i''d ask the ladies here.
(and sorry this is non-wedding related).

i always thought that once you break up with someone, you should delete all email correspondences, blogposts, pictures, etc. at least in public sphere (if not also in your home computer).

my DH thought otherwise and he was ''forced'' to delete stuff about his past relationship(s) from his homepage when we were dating back in the days--i thought it was disrespectful to our relationship.

however, i noticed recently that a lot of people still leave stuff about ex-es on their web pages and it made me wonder whether this is the norm ... whether i was being weird/ narrow minded in feeling upset and forcing DH to delete them.

what i find hard to understand is, why some people would rather ''abandon'' a particular blog (while leaving pictures and stories plastered all over in cyberspace) and start a new one, than just delete stuff about their broken relationship.

i don''t know. is it me, or them? can someone explain/ side with me?

Exes, just like anything that occured in your past, are part of your memory and shape who you are.

FI has photos of his high school sweetheart. I would never ask him to throw those away. Just like I wouldn''t want to throw away some photos or memories that I have of my exes.

Now if the photos are inappropriate or you feel extremely disrespected by them (nekked photos for example) then yes, you have a right to not want them in your home. But its silly to feel threatened by a past memory and "forcing" someone to delete/get rid of those memories is kind of because you feel threatened in one way or another.

As for blogposts...again it depends on the nature. If its innocent then it isn''t that big of a deal.

After I say all this I also want to end with you do what you feel comfortable with and what works for your relationship. If it bothers you so much then your DH should respect that.

 

[laurel25]

I guess my social group might be a little outside the norm, but quite a few people I know blog on various topics (weight loss, family photos, art, social commentary/satire, current events, just a name a few of the topics). I don''t think that anyone that I know that blogs, myself included, would delete old posts just because they mention an ex. The past is the past and it''s a part of who you are and how you came to be the person you are today. If the person you''re with is that insecure about your past, well then maybe they have trust issues or other issues within the current relationship that need to be resolved. Now, I''m not saying that you should continue to mention the person in every single post, but why would anyone be threated by something that occurred in the past and was written about it the past? I can see taking down couple-y type photos from Facebook or MySpace, but blogposts is just a bit too far. Who even goes back and reads old blogposts anyway? And if you do, then it''s just a snapshot of your life and your feelings and your point of view at that moment and in no way reflects on who you currently are or the status of your current relationship.

 

[wannaBMrsH]

Date: 1/13/2009 11:48:18 AM
Author: Aloros
I left it up. It''s waaaaaay back in my blog, it''s not all hearts and flowers anyway, and it''s a piece of my past. I don''t really care to forget my past. I definitely feel like I''ve learned from it.

FI is better for me in so many ways that I can''t imagine that he''d feel threatened!

The old photos and mementos go somewhere where neither of us will run across them on accident.

I agree with Aloros...I have an (abandoned) blog that is still up and I haven''t deleted anything because all of those were things I was experiencing at the time. I can look back on that and specifically point to something that changed the core of who I am. I can also read back on it and see the fresh ideas I was starting to grasp that have since become firmly rooted beliefs. If there are any mentions to relationships during that time, I can look back and see how far I''ve come.

I don''t know about everyone else here (some people here on PS have confidence in spades!), but it took me a very, very long time and lot''s and lot''s of soul searching to genuinely like the woman that I have become. It was very difficult for me to assert who I wanted to be against who I wanted others to like. My blog was my way of exploring that and working it out with myself outside of my head.

My FI now is a million miles from some of the men (boys) listed on my blog and it delights me to be able to go back and read through my list of requirements in a man 6 or 7 years later and see that I found him and more importantly, HE LOVES ME!!

 

[calidaisy]

thanks for all your responses, ladies.
i feel so much better (enlightened and validated reading your opinions.

in my defense, i''m not talking about remaining "friends" with ex-es on facebook or keeping letters, gifts, or even pictures in a box left in a storage space somewhere when i wrote "blog posts."

the posts i asked DH to delete (as well as i''m referring here about other people) were writings about things they did together (trips, activities, etc) along with tons of pictures from those trips and activities (hugging, kissing, lovey-dovey). at the time, i felt weird to be the "new" girl while DH''s public blog was plastered with pictures from the previous relationship. i''m sure i felt threatened/ insecure at the time since our relationship was promising but still new. and thus, "forced" DH to delete them. however, that was just me and i don''t expect everyone to understand me.

nevertheless, i still have hard time understanding people who leave tons of personal pictures/ journals about their previous relationships in cyberspace while both their ex-es and themselves have moved on to (multiple) new relationships.

 

[princesss]

I used to keep a blog, and a few of my exes took front stage on them throughout the years I kept my blog. My blog was a way for me to keep up with friends all over the world, and I decided to keep them up. However, they are now private entries that only people who knew me then have access to.

I don''t want to take them down, because I have no record of them anywhere else, and that was a significant part of the person I was then and, consequently, the person I am now. I don''t feel any pang of "what could have been" when I look at them. Mostly I remember the time, smile, and thank my lucky stars that life turned out the way it did (and that I''m not with them anymore, lol).

 

[oobiecoo]

If it was a good relationship and ended nicely then I would maybe say to leave it up... otherwise, delete.

 

[OUpearlgirl]

I kept up all of the pictures and wall posts between me and my ex. I felt it slightly immature to delete them all... Like pretending the relationship never even happened. It doesn''t bother me that they are up, there are like 50 new photos in front of them! He was someone I cared very much about for a very long time and to delete it all like it never happened seemed a bit harsh.

 

[Smurfysmiles]

I didn''t delete any of my blogs because that''s what I did in high school as opposed to having a diary so it''s something I keep close to me.

However, I have deleted pictures of exs off my facebook with the exception of one who died in iraq and i know fi doesnt have a problem with that.

so i guess im torn down the middle? lol

 

[purrfectpear]

Past relationships are part of who you are. Those experiences shaped your lifescape and don''t suddenly cease to be significant just because some new person comes along in your life that is insecure and feels "disrespected".

If for nothing else, I''d leave them up as a filter to eliminate people who actually thought it was appropriate to "force" me to delete them

.