To Keep Or To Delete: 19 People On How They Handled The Digital Remains Of Their Last Relationship
1. “Oh I just leave everything. I think it’s super embarrassing and weird when people take it all down. I’m also not one to post super gross couple stuff in the first place, so it’s never been an issue before.”
—Jenny, 25
2. “I kept the important stuff but I got rid of any nudes I had. I figure that once you’re broken up you relinquish all rights to have things like that.”
—Brian, 29
3. “I keep everything so that I can play the Jeff Buckley version of ‘Hallelujah’ while drinking whiskey and crying like a baby over what might have been.”
—Jackson, 27
4. “I keep all the digital pictures and everything but it’s not like I consciously keep the stuff. It’s more like I don’t even know where it is and don’t care enough to even look and get rid of it. That’s how dead my exes are to me. However I did have one ex who took all the pictures of us I had and tore them up and taped them to the outside of my house. That was a fun afternoon.”
—Jason, 26
5. “The last time I had a breakup, all we had was MySpace haha but we really didn’t have any photos of us together that were uploaded to the web. If I had, I wouldn’t have deleted all the pictures anyway as we remained friends after the breakup.”
—Sandra, 31
6. “I didn’t do anything about it. I just left everything up. The only thing I did do was change my profile picture from one of me and him to one of my roommate and I. Something that made it easier was that we didn’t have an actual ‘relationship status’ on Facebook. I don’t feel like anyone over the age of 17 has that anymore anyway.”
—Jean, 25
7. “Fun fact about me: I rarely add anyone I date on Facebook. Which is weird because for my job, I am relatively active on social media. But, because of that, I tend to be attracted to guys who are not into social media at all. If we are friends on social media and there are pictures, they are rarely of just the two of us. So it just looks like a friend group hanging out. I will say it can be really tempting though to want to scroll through their life after the break up but because they rarely post anyway, it works out because I don’t have to obsess about what they’re doing. Now the pictures in my phone on the other hand….hard to entirely delete because I look completely on point in them.”
—Mia, 27
8. “In my last relationship I was able to kind of see that things were moving toward a breakup and started the weening process early by removing his updates from my Facebook feed and that kind of thing. When he broke up with me (for another girl) I literally made him delete every somewhat racy picture of me that I’d ever sent him from his phone and then I went home and got rid of every digital reminder I had of him. I don’t care what they do with the Facebook pics of me or whatever but I don’t want him keeping nudes of me to show to anyone else later on.”
—Jane, 21
9. “It sort of varies depending on the breakup. I deleted basically all social media photos from a relationship that I just needed to completely not think about in order to get over and move on, but I’ve kept photos of breakups where it was a bit easier. I didn’t have to wipe the slate clean in order to get over them, and we were still apart of each other’s lives somewhat, so it’d be weird to delete those photos anyway.”
—Kaylee, 25
10. “For social, I did the great unfollow on all social media. Didn’t change any photos previously tagged. Pics and all that I still have but almost never look at.”
—Kurt, 24
11. “I’ve kept all of it for the most part. I even have a couple of letters from my high school girlfriend from when I went away to college. Honestly though, I have so many digital pictures from over the years that it’d be a real chore to try and find any of that stuff that I’ve kept.”
—Jack, 28
12. “I go full on nuclear option after a breakup. Any photos I have of us online I delete. Anything I have on my computer gets deleted. The phone number gets blocked then deleted. All texts get deleted. All emails get deleted. I don’t leave a trace of them in my life at all. If its over then it’s over and there’s no reason to keep anything.”
—Aleenuh, 22
13. “Eh, I actually have an ex-boyfriend folder on my computer where I keep all that stuff. I guess that sounds creepy but my guess is that if I kept all this stuff in a shoebox then people would think it was romantic so whatever. For me it’s more like remembering your history.”
—Charlotte, 26
14. “I haven’t ever had a breakup that was so bad that I felt the need to actively get rid of stuff and I don’t think anyone over the age of 15 fills out their relationship status on Facebook anymore.”
—Ray, 23
15. “There’s two categories of things that I keep, the really good and the really bad. I keep the good stuff so I can remind myself I didn’t waste my time with them and I keep the bad to remind me why it didn’t work out. On social media though I get rid of everything we’re together and I unfriend them. The longer you keep them in your life publicly then the longer it takes to move past the breakup.”
—Mike, 27
16. “I never really post couple-y pictures or make a big deal out of relationships online, so I usually just leave tagged pics up and it’s not a big deal. However, the craziest thing I’ve ever done in this regard is, I once broke up with my SO right after a trip we took together. I hadn’t posted any pics from it but there was one I really wanted to use because I looked awesome and the background was gorgeous… but my SO was in the pic too. So I got my friend, who is a miracle worker with Photoshop, to completely remove him from the picture. To this day, nobody’s ever picked up on the fact that there was once another person with their arm around me in that picture. I owe my (social media cultivated) life to that friend.”
—Olivia, 23
17. “I keep everything because I’m so disorganized that I couldn’t any pictures I’d saved even if wanted to. I’m literally that girl who has 300 unread emails. As far as Facebook, I’ve never felt the need to change anything on there, mostly because I only check it like once every two weeks.”
—Layla, 24
18. “I don’t believe in keeping relationship mementos like photos and stuff. It’s something special like a trip to someplace I remember fondly then I’ll keep it but I’ve never understood people who keep photos of them and their ex from ‘the good ‘ol days’ or whatever. Seems kind of morbid and, frankly, weak.”
—Chloe, 27
19. “I keep things but I don’t really look at them. The only reason I keep them is because I don’t want to forget the past even when it was bad or bittersweet. All these people meant something incredible to me at some point and they don’t deserve to be forgotten even though things ended. On social media I get rid of everything though. It seems silly to keep that stuff.”
—Regina, 25 
