I have a few awkward questions, lads, but this one goes into /emo/ as I do want at least semi-serious answers...
It seems like a fairly common thing now for couples to exchange intimate pictures in a digital format. I've never taken pictures of myself, but I have had a few ex-girlfriends e-mail and message them to me. I'm presently in a happy relationship, but I was looking through messages from a few years earlier and caught an eyeful. I then became aware it would make me feel pretty strange if my partner had access to these materials from a previous lover.
1) What are the ethics of keeping these pictures, if they've been shared with you consensually, after that relationship has ended?
2) What's the legality of it? I'm not an arsehole and haven't shared them without consent, but what about passively not deleting them?
3) How can I practically delete them without erasing all traces of the relationship? In my own case, I'd like to get rid of them as it doesn't feel right. I could theoretically just filter down to any e-mail with an attachment from that person and delete them, but it would also erase a lot of more innocent and pleasant memories in the process. Is there a smart way of doing it without manual sorting and getting a few strange feelings in the process?
1. I seem to be in a minority going from past discussions but I always delete everything after a relationship. Something about it has always sat wrong with me given the intention it was shared no longer exists.
A slightly less ethical consideration is that there's always the risk something gets out and once it does then damage is permanent. It also feels like good mental hygiene to scrub everything, usually I even throw things out.
2. Seems fine by my read. I think everyone at this point understands the permeance of electronic communications and uses of snapchat etc. seem to be ubiquitous partly as a response to that.
3.
>it would also erase a lot of more innocent and pleasant memories in the process
I am firmly emotionally over my ex-girlfriends. I wouldn't reply if any of them contacted me again, for example.
I think my issue is that it feels more like tearing pages out of a diary. It's not that I'm still attached to the person, but to what extent should I keep these (non-sexual) things as a part of my personal history?
I sometimes find it helpful to frame things in terms of my current partner. How would it feel to me if she did this? It wouldn't bother me if somewhere in her e-mail account there were general loving messages from one of her exes she hadn't deleted. But it would bother me if she chose to preserve them and read over them for some reason. It would also bother me if there were lewd or passionate stuff.
Maybe you're right and it's best to just be rid of everything, but my gut tells me I might be erasing a bit of the younger me, if that makes sense.
I reckon you will get some quite diverse views on this, mine is totally counter to otherlad's already.
I don't see how keeping nudes your ex sent you is an issue and frankly I think anyone who's jealous over it needs to have a word with themselves about it. If you're jealous of the pictures, how are you not jealous of all the actual real life times they had their ugly bits slamming together? If you delete the pictures, do you also delete the memory in your head of your ex's naked body?
It seems to me like something you'd do just to pacify your partner's insecurity, but I honestly can't see any real logical reason it should be an issue. I've got loads of my exes I sometimes have a nostalgic wank over, but that doesn't mean I am going to go out and fuck them. I fundamentally don't see how it's different to any old porn, except perhaps a bit better because of the personal connection.
If I picture my missus rubbing herself off to a picture of her ex, sure it instinctively makes me a bit angry- But the thing is, as long as that bloke is actually well and truly out of her life, and you know you can trust her, how is it any different to her rubbing one out to a picture of Tom Hardy or Jason Momoamomao with their kit off?
(And if you think your missus doesn't occasionally rub one out to pictures of Tom Hardy or Jason Moamoamoa with their kit off, I've got bad news for you, just like if she was naive enough to think you don't crack one out on PornHub now and again when she's gone to bed.)
Jealousy is most often rooted in the self, not the actions of a partner. So long as there are no actual signs or potential weaknesses there in the relationship, this sort of thing shouldn't be an issue.
I think it's generally expected these days that this stuff is deleted when the relationship ends, sorry lad, and if your current partner ever discovered you still had them worst case she would think you were a misogynist or something. But I imagine they are legal to keep.
>>32235 It seems to me like you're doing a bit of slight of hand here. In the first you literally remove the temporal element and in the second you believe wanking over a past romance is remotely the same as wanking to something you found in a bush.
I think you need to split the two elements of pleasure between the purely physical and the other more emotional relationship. And yes the latter does feature into your sex life with your partners. To reframe this, most birds are somewhat fine with a bloke having porn and treat it as a fact of life but they're not okay with you keeping pictures of your ex on the bedside table or calling her name out in bed. It's very different in how a person will feel about you indulging in an innocent fantasy and one where there is a real reality attached to it, of course they're going to feel hurt and they're going to feel that they're not satisfying the connection you should feel at a deeper level.
Let's look at why you're even wanking to that stuff, what are you getting out of it over porn:
>nostalgic
>personal connection
Yeah. I think you need to evaluate why you're lugging around that collection of images from your past relationships with Tom Hardy and Jason Momoa. They're not coming back, it's time to live the life you have now.
What if you look at pictures of lassies you know on Facebook or the suchlike, and try to imagine what their fanny looks like based on the visual cues from the rest of their body?
I would argue that if you have to delete all traces of an ex to "get over" them, you are not really getting over them at all. What you are doing is just avoidance. Avoidance is, in psychological terms, pretty much one of the least healthy way of dealing with something.
I've never really had an ex I was so badly traumatised by that I felt the need to do something like that, but I have noticed with female friends they tend to have a very emotional response at first where they (literally, in one instance) burn all traces of anything in their life that could remind them of the ex. I had one partner who got angry at me because she went scrolling through my Facebook page and found pictures I was still tagged in with her and so on. To me that felt totally mental- To her it was a sign I hadn't moved on and wanted to keep her around somehow, but to me it was just that it just simply never occurred to me in even the faintest way that you're supposed to do that when you break up with someone.
Now, if you are still regularly wanking over nudes of your ex, you've got the opposite problem, and out of all the memories you should want to preserve, I'd imagine there are more important ones than the out of focus titty pics she sent you when you were both drunk. But in principle I think it's along the same lines, really.
I think perhaps my own stance on the matter is that I don't see a problem with keeping them, but you shouldn't be "using" them while you're with someone else. I'd see no harm in stashing them away on some old memory stick, just in case you're single again in future and need some comforting wank fodder, and frankly just on a personal moral level I don't believe it's anyone else's business what you do with stuff like this. But it's obviously not healthy if you feel the need to keep pining over them on a regular basis.
>>32244 >I'd see no harm in stashing them away on some old memory stick, just in case you're single again in future and need some comforting wank fodder
OP here. This also definitely does not sit right with me, as it a) indicates a deliberate curation of the images, and b) suggests a very low level of faith in the current relationship.
Every woman I've ever been with has been the woman I wanted to be with until the day I die, until one day she wasn't any more. You don't have to have a "low level of faith in your current relationship" to acknowledge that life has many ups and downs, and you can never say what the future may hold.
If anything you are placing unhealthy and unrealistic expectations on a partner if you truly do think they are The One, who you will love forever and that they will reciprocate it forever, and nothing will ever change for either of you. I think this is another flaw in the conventional wisdom of relationships, and in reality, you are much likely to be happy with a relationship when you can live for the present of that relationship.
You've obviously made your mind up that it's wrong to keep them, so I don't know what exactly you were even asking us for- Just go delete them. I'm only giving you some things to think about when it comes to acceptance of your (and a potential partner's) past, and mindfulness about your (and a potential partner's) future.
