The Ex-Box, Revisited

You know, the “Ex-Box?” That little shrine where your SO (usually it’s wimmin that do this) keeps pictures, letters, body parts and sundry other things from previous relationships. We’ve done a thread in the past about whether or not you get offended with the Ex-Box and why, but this one addresses it from another angle.

I’ve always treated the Ex-Box as though it were an evil-tempered 15 pound tarantula lurking in the closet. Hey, nothing in there for me, and certainly nothing I need to be mucking about with in that box! None of my business. I wish it weren’t there, but it is, and so I live in self-imposed ignorance of it as much as possible.

Recent events, however, have renewed my interest in this vile practice. Specifically: I am about to become one of its inhabitants! And I don’t think I deserve to be just another trophy along with the extra-marital affairs and just plain lucky sods who escaped her when they had the chance. I’ve been the major player in her life form more than half of the breaths she’s drawn on this planet and being sentenced to the box is, to me, insulting.

What’s at stake? About 20 letters written to her before we were married, some pictures of us, the marriage license and one of my wisdom teeth (long story). None of these things were in the box when I came across them as I was packing up the last of my stuff, so I nicked them. Hey, the tooth is freaking MY tooth, I have at least as much right to the marriage license as she does, at least I’m not the one who shit all over the marriage. Same goes for the pictures taken at the wedding she ultimately dishonored. And the letters…well, I wrote them, they are from me, they have more power to remind me of my life when I wrote them than they have to remind her of how things used to be between us. So I claim the right to them. She disagrees, they were given to her and so they belong to her.

Perhaps this is me being petty, but since I can’t have the last 25 years of my life back, I want her to not have trophies of me for that time. Am I going to push it? Tear the place apart until I find them and enjoy a nice blaze in the back yard? No, but if I stumble across them, they’re gone. I’ll steal them from her just as surely as she stole my dreams from me. And yes, I’ve considered her going over them in 10 or 15 years and looking back at the marriage she wasted and the guy she trashed, and I hope she’s sick. But even allowing her to pity herself for the low road she’s been taking for the better part of 5 years seems generous.

So the poll? After all that do I owe her the right to stick me in the box?

Speaking as a woman who is in the process of dissolving her marriage, I don’t view mementos of exes as “trophies.” I have pictures of my ex and several items related to him that I’d like to keep, but mostly because we still maintain a friendship and because our mutual child might appreciate them someday. I don’t look at that stuff and mentally gloat, “Ha ha! Screwed him over, I did! Pathetic loser! HA HA HA HA HA!!!11!!!1!” Sometimes I’m briefly drawn into nostalgia when I see a photo of him on the cabinet or find a notebook with his writings in it. But just for a moment. Then I return to reality and go back to what I was doing.

That said, I do wish he’d come over and get all of the other photos, poetry notebooks, clothing, books and CDs he left at my place already. I need my closet space! :mad:

My probably-soon-to-be-ex-wife held on to the wedding album from her marriage to her first husband. Who was a philandering, physically abusive alcoholic.

She showed them to my mother when we were planning our wedding.

We never even had prints made from our own photographs. Hell, she’s probably 50 times the number of photos of her first husband as she does as me, even though we’ve been together twice as long.

Weird, now that I think about it.

Missed the edit window, so I wanted to add this:

No, I don’t think she wants to keep the stuff as “trophies” so much as to remember the good times you had when you were married. I’m not very well informed as to the particulars of your marriage, so I can see when you might disagree.

First, let me bow my head and thank TGINLBI that I did not marry my psycho ho-bag college girlfriend, even though she wanted to.

OK, that’s over with.

Inigo, I’m not going to tell you to let it go, because after being told the same thing wayyyy back in the day, I know that it’s not worth a fart in a submersible on a James Cameron movie set.

And I’m not going to tell you that the bad times will pass, because after being told that back in the day, I realize that that’s somewhere in Christmas Kind-Of-Fucking-Far-In-The-Future and you don’t want to hear it now, and I don’t blame you.

But I will tell you this: The entire key to your OP lies in one simple fact. The only reason your ex along with these little knick-knacks from hell have any power over you whatsoever is that you allow them to have power. I don’t know the history, and I’m sure you have a right to be angry, but being angry is one thing, and this is quite another.

Look at what you’re obsessing over. Some pictures. A tooth! A tooth that isn’t even in your mouth anymore. These are not talismans we’re talking about. They have no innate power. Your ex could take a hammer and smash that tooth, and you wouldn’t be a bit worse off. The only power these objects have is the power you have chosen to grant them. When you decide to revoke that power, they will be harmless. To reiterate, the only reason they’re not harmless now is that you have chosen to make them into something huge. The same goes for your ex, btw, but I think we should concentrate on the stuff right now.

Once again, I’m not telling you to just “let it go.” I’ve never been able to figure out exactly what “it” is. But I think that if you at least try to step outside the situation for a moment and see these pictures and whatnot for what they really are–symbols of a past which no longer applies–I think you’ll agree that what happens to them and where they wind up doesn’t matter at all.

Please feel free to PM me if you want to talk about it.

Linty. I grok. I’m just in the angry and petty stage right now. I’ll get over it and I know that. but until then … DRAMA!

No sweat, I’ve been there too. Grok on! :slight_smile:

Going through my divorce we actually fought over who was going to take it. I didn’t want anything that reminded me of him around me. I would figure he felt the same way about me. I didn’t want the wedding photos. The rings. Any of it. Told him to keep it. He didn’t want it and ultimately it all ended up in my Jeep come moving day.

Fast forward a year later (that long because I found them in storage when I moved again) I emailed him and gave him fore warning that I was burning every memory of him. Wedding photos. Letters. Everything. Told him if he wanted any of it he had a day to tell me. He emailed me back within 30 minutes and pretty much said, “have at it…” Later that night after talking with FourPaws, he allowed me to have a bon fire of sorts at his house. 4 years of my life was gone in less then an hour.