On Deleting Photos Of My Ex

Should I keep those photos?

Shortly after my ex blindsided me with a horrific breakup, I went on a photo cleansing spree and decisively deleted all photos with him or us in it. I wanted to erase all memories of him and looking at those photos, even having them on my photo, anywhere where they may accidentally pop up, felt far too painful. So I used the Google search function and located every photo with his face in it and swiftly pressed delete.

I was so angry with him and I felt too hurt by his harsh rejection of our relationship that I couldn’t bear the thought of having any remnants of him in my life.

I left the photos to sit in my trash folder, but then I regretted my decision one morning while less angry and more nostalgic and I quickly recovered all photos of him.

I hid his face on Google Photos and turned off the memories function to ensure I was not confronted with any photos of him.

For a while, I thought that would be ok, but then occasionally while searching for other photos, I stumbled across his face and the wound reopened. I angrily began deleting all photos of his face once more.

Slowly deleting memories of him from my life, photo by photo.

Every deletion made me feel a tiny bit better. One less photo, one less memory to hold onto. Sadly, not all memories can be erased by deleting their evidence.

If only.

While deleting them, I wondered whether I was doing the right thing. Would I regret deleting all these photos of us? Once my anger softened and only good feelings remained, would I intensely regret deleting those photos?

Yes and no.

I sometimes want to look at photos of our relationship to prove to myself that I am not crazy. That we existed and our relationship happened. I sometimes wonder whether I imagined our whole relationship. When my ex broke us, he acted like I had been the most awful girlfriend, despite never raising any complaint. He also tossed our relationship of 5 years aside like it meant nothing to him, without a backward glance.

Were the last five years real? Was he pretending to love and care about me the whole time?

It was real to me, despite his attempts to gaslight me during the breakup and blame me for the entire failure of our relationship.

We had happy memories. We once shared adventures and love. No matter how it ended, those photos are evidence of that.

But, looking at photos of us also makes me sad. I avoid it. More than a year later and it is painful to see a photo of us, locked in an embrace. A time when we were happy and I did not know of the dark future that awaited this relationship.

Those photos I have deleted already, are gone forever. I do not want them back. I have enough photos to remind me of the times that were happy, should I ever feel the need to be reminded.

I will, however, never look at those photos fondly.

He will go down in the history of my life as someone who caused me an incredible amount of pain. He will always be remembered that way, no matter how many photos of our good times remain.

I don’t know if I want photos of someone who caused me so much pain. I don’t want to be reminded of our happier times and I don’t want to remember him fondly. I don’t think he deserves that. He does not deserve to be remembered fondly, in any format.

Perhaps in time, I will delete every single photo of him.