Yes. Details coming later.
a) Do you keep mementos of past loves? Photos, gifts, stuff like that?
Sure.
b) Does you current S/O know/care that you keep them?
Yes/no.
**c) Why do/don’t you keep them? **
People don’t stop being part of my life because we’ve changed our relationship.
d) Do you display them promiently or keep them in a box somewhere?
It depends. Photos are around the house; gifts are incorporated into household possessions; other photos and correspondence are filed.
e) If your current S/O keeps them, how do YOU feel about the practice? Explain.
I feel fine about it. I’m not jealous of my partner’s past.
All characters in this narrative are female.
a) Do you keep mementos of past loves? Photos, gifts, stuff like that?
Sure. I keep scrapbooks and they are in them.
b) Does you current S/O know/care that you keep them?
Knows, yes. Cares no.
c) Why do/don’t you keep them?
Part of my life.
d) Do you display them promiently or keep them in a box somewhere?
The are in my scrapbooks and those stand on the bottom shelf.
**e) If your current S/O keeps them, how do YOU feel about the practice? **
Same. He has a box of old photo’s and some of those are of the times he had with exes and of the exes themselves. I’ve looked at those curiously and that’s it.
I would mind if a picture of his ex still hung on the wall. I had an ex who was a photographer and when we started out, he had a few very good pictures of his beautiful ex framed on the wall of his apartment. After I complained about those, he took them down. He claimed he just kept them because they were very good pictures. I believe him, he also had other framed pictures hanging up he had made (cityscapes and landscapes).
I’m a girl.
a) Do you keep mementos of past loves? Photos, gifts, stuff like that?
Not very much. I don’t remember getting rid of stuff for that reason, it kind of got moved out in the normal course of cleaning house. I do have some things from way back, like my junior prom pictures in my scrapbook, but I have a high school scrap book anyway, it’s not exclusively dedicated to say, my 10th grade boyfriend.
b) Does you current S/O know/care that you keep them?
He knows I have photo albums, he doesn’t care. Again, they are more general-purpose albums. Also, we still know many of the people socially, the afore-mentioned 10th grade boyfriend and his wife and their kids are now our neighbors.
c) Why do/don’t you keep them?
I don’t keep things I don’t really feel attached to, and I don’t have anything from a former SO that fits into that category.
d) Do you display them promiently or keep them in a box somewhere?
N/A
e) If your current S/O keeps them, how do YOU feel about the practice? Explain.
He doesn’t.
This thread is now making me a little resentful that I didn’t get any better gifts from former SOs that would make me feel conflicted about keeping them, like diamonds or minks or cars or something! 
Single male.
**a) Do you keep mementos of past loves? Photos, gifts, stuff like that?**I have some I guess, but I don’t specifically keep such things.
b) Does you current S/O know/care that you keep them? Single N/A
c) Why do/don’t you keep them?::shrug:: who can say? I don’t live in the past too much. I have some fond memories of some past loves, but I don’t feel the need to hang onto such things.
**d) Do you display them promiently or keep them in a box somewhere?**N/A
**e) If your current S/O keeps them, how do YOU feel about the practice? Explain.**N/A If I had a SO, I probably would’t care if she kept such things. Having loved someone else doens’t mean she loves me less.
Female, straight
a) Nope
b) N/A
c) Why should I? What I want to remember, I remember. Plus, no one’s ever given me anything worth keeping - the only one who sent me letters was kind of juvenile about it, and I burned those after I broke up with him.
d) N/A
e) N/A
Female - I have a main ex who I went out with for years, before dating the guy who’s now my husband. For any other guys, I didn’t receive much other than letters, which I threw out at some point.
a) The only thing that I recall keeping is a gold watch I got as a present and that’s because, hey, it’s a gold watch. I haven’t worn it in a couple years at least, however, and the battery is dead. I’m pretty sure after the breakup I tossed everything else, letters included.
b) I told my now-husband years ago who the watch was from, and he didn’t care. I don’t know if he remembers that now. Heck, I even forget I own the watch sometimes - I had typed out that I’d thrown away everything until it came back to mind.
c) I threw away everything else because (at the time of the breakup) the ex had been a jerk and I didn’t want to think about him. I kept the watch because, like I said, it was a gold watch and I had the idea at the time that this was a good thing to keep for the future. I had also kept a set of gold and ruby earrings and necklace, but I think I got rid of those some time later because unlike the watch, I really didn’t like them.
d) I think it’s thrown haphazardly on top of my dresser amongst some socks and underwear I haven’t put away.
e) My husband doesn’t keep anything because his ex turned out to be a bitch who was using him.
I’m a female.
a) Yes, but only of one particular relationship.
b) No, but I doubt he would care.
c) I keep them because they elicit memories of what it was like to really fall in love for the first time. It’s more about remembering that particular time in my life, rather than the guy himself.
d) I keep them out of sight.
e) I’m not sure if my SO keeps any - I wouldn’t care if he did. As long as he’s not looking at them every night weeping over a bottle of wine, then he’s entitled to his keepsakes just like I am!
Another female checking in.
Do you keep mementos of past loves? Photos, gifts, stuff like that?
I have a jar that says “Ashes of Old Lovers” on it. Does that count? Aside from that I have bizarrely kept my wedding photo album although I am at a loss to explain why.
Does you current S/O know/care that you keep them?
Yes, he does.
**Why do/don’t you keep them? **
I have no idea, for some reason I just can’t quite bring myself to throw them away. It seems quite odd to me because I’ve been divorced from the bloke for many years, have had no contact with him and have absolutely no desire ever to see him again.
Do you display them promiently or keep them in a box somewhere?
They’re in a box under the stereo in my study. They’re not exactly “displayed” but they’re not hidden either.
If your current S/O keeps them, how do YOU feel about the practice? Explain.
I don’t believe he does, at least if he’s keeping any photos then they’re very well hidden! It’s not a conversation we’ve had before, he knows about my photos but since he’s never been married the question doesn’t arise from his side. Other than that, I don’t think he’s got any photos at all.
I’m a girl.
a) I have some photos scattered around in albums that I’d forgotten about until you asked. I recently threw away a packet of love letters from a particular guy. I’d kept them all these 10 years because I thought it would be interesting to read at some point, but when I tried to read through them it made me really uncomfortable for some reason. I guess because I don’t have feelings for him anymore?
b) Single and don’t keep stuff, so N/A.
c) Those things don’t mean anything to me anymore, so get rid of 'em.
d) N/A
e) Still single! But if I had an S/O that kept stuff like that I wouldn’t mind at all.
I am female.
Do you keep mementos of past loves? Photos, gifts, stuff like that?
I have no photos. If I kept gifts, it’s because they were practical and impersonal, or because I forgot that he was the one to give them to me. I also have a few letters that my ex wrote.
Does you current S/O know/care that you keep them?
Yes, he knows. I don’t believe he cares (though you may want to correct me if I’m wrong, Alistair McCello).
Why do/don’t you keep them?
I keep the letters because they document the mistakes that my ex and I made in our relationship. I tend to forget a lot about that relationship, including the problems my ex and I went through, but I don’t want to be making those same mistakes with my current boyfriend. I’m hoping the letters will remind me of those past mistakes and help to prevent me from making them again.
Do you display them promiently or keep them in a box somewhere?
They’re in a packing box somewhere. My parents just moved houses, and my stuff was all stuffed in drawers at the old house.
If your current S/O keeps them, how do YOU feel about the practice? Explain.
I don’t know if he keeps anything or not, but I would not be bothered if he did.
Male, 41, not in a relationship at the moment.
I have kept old photos, in 2 or 3 little boxes in my parents’ basement. I can’t see throwing away photos, especially as throwing away every photo of my ex-wife would mean throwing away a lot of my daughter’s baby pictures. This actually seems weird to me – I would hate to have erased a big part of my life because a significant other was too neurotic to deal with it. Honestly, I haven’t looked at them in years, but I’m sure at some point I will be happy that I kept pictures of my high-school girlfriend, just like I’d be happy to see pictures of old apartments or friends I’ve lost track of. I fail to see how a box of photos can be seen as carrying a torch. I also have my elementary school photos in storage, but I’m not carrying a torch for my third-grade class.
Letters, yes, not many, the most recent 24 years old, nothing incriminating or that I’d be mortified if my Mom read, from my high school girlfriend and college girlfriend, and a few from a woman I had a fling with 15 years ago who wrote great letters. Again, in a box somewhere, not being reread with delight by candlelight on evenings alone.
No other keepsakes than I can think of, although there are certainly books and CDs given to me by exes floating about anonymously. If there were little love-tokens or tchotchkes like that, they’ve been tossed.
I agree that these people are in my past (most of them, I’m still friends with two exes and have to deal with ex-wife all the time), but I don’t feel a box of photos in my folks’ basement is dwelling on it too much. If someone I was dating is “bugged” by the fact that I haven’t thrown them away, then I feel that they’re just as bugged by the very fact that these women even exist and are probably too neurotic to have a relationship with.
**Does you current S/O know/care that you keep them? ** I don’t have an SO at the moment, but in my last relationship it never came up as far as I can remember. Both of us had long dating histories. I would never display photos of an ex-girlfriend or my ex-wife, that seems really inappropriate. My daughter is enough of a reminder than I have an ex-wife, thanks.
The whole question of how much sharing about old relationships is too much is probably fodder for another thread. Someone above used the phrase “warmth and nostalgia” and I think that gets close to it – honesty about your life is good, but too much warmth and nostalgia about an old relationship is going to be sending the wrong signals.
To this point, my last ex did have a tiny picture of her most recent boyfriend on her piano (she tried to play it off as a joke, it was a Christmas picture his mother sent her); she also tried to get my to wear the clothes he left behind, which creeped me out more than the photo. She also displayed four or five paintings by another ex. Suffice it to say her inability to let go of old relationships was one of the issues that made me ultimately leave her.
If your current S/O keeps them, how do YOU feel about the practice? Explain.
My experiences are certainly colored by the fact that my most recent dating experiences have been in the New York City metropolitan areas and dating women in their late 30s and early 40s. I’ve found that when you meet people via an Internet dating site you tend to talk about Internet dating too much. I think the sharing in that regard should be honest but anonymous and in general terms as much as possible. In the two relationships I’ve had since the divorce (around 6 months and 18 months long), both women way over-shared with the information about past boyfriends and sexual dalliances. (Oddly enough, both described in detail encounters with men who had micro-penises – they could have been the same exact story.) I didn’t hear anything that made me insecure (hearing about some guy’s micro-penis won’t do that, generally), but the first gal did create a pretty firm overall impression that I was Guy #47 in an Ongoing Series of 100 (which is what it turned out to be, so fair enough), and in the second it really was a case someone who was overly obsessed with her past romantic history and overly jealous of mine.
I am a female.
a) I have photos with ex’s in them. They show places I’ve been, other people I like, and sometimes I look really cute – there’s no reason to dump a big group of photos just because an ex is in them. I don’t really keep other kinds of mementos. Stuffed animals, letters, etc just lose their value when I don’t care about the person who gave them to me. They become junk, cluttering up my already tiny apartment. The one exception is a letter my first boyfriend wrote me. It contains the first instance of a non-family member saying “I love you.”
b) My SO knows I have the photos, but may or may not know that my exs are in them. I don’t make a point of saying, “And this is Joe, who I was boinking at the time. Isn’t he handsome!!”
c) Lose their sentimental value and just become stuff.
d) Some photos are in frames, but most are in a shoebox under the bed.
e) My current SO used to have a bunch of stuff from his ex girlfriends – his Box Of Pain, as he liked to call it. It bugged me intensely, but I didn’t mention it because if he needed this stuff it was his business. As we dated longer and longer, I noticed ex-girlfriend stuff disappearing. I like to think that as our relationship became more important, old relationships became less so.