Can't get over this.

[Its_not_personal]

I've been with my boyfriend for over a year, and I've been friends with him for over six years. We have a loving and caring relationship, it's very solid. A few months ago I was using his computer, not without permission, and I accidentally ran across some old pictures of his last girlfriend, performing some X-rated acts on my boyfriend. (He was the photographer.) I knew he had some "private pictures" on there, but he said they were "safe." Well, they weren't. I was devastated, and I tried to speak to him about it, initially he brushed me off, saying that it was a part of his past, and he didn't like the idea of erasing it. After I finally was able to get across to him how upsetting the pictures were, he volunteered to delete the offending pictures. I was very proud of him for doing that, and it was the best thing he could have done in that situation, I thanked him for what he did for me.

 

I have never allowed any pictures of me to be taken that are any more explicit than PG-13, specifically because any pictures like that can come back to bite you, and boy do they, in ways you never would expect. And these bit me. Ever since then I've had minimal interest in being intimate, because every time, those revolting images just pop back into my mind. I'm sad, and I'm beginning to feel unreasonably angry at, and jealous of, this poor girl who never did anything to me. They parted amiably, but they don't really talk and there's no reason that I would suspect that he would be interested in anyone but me, and I feel very secure in this. At the same time, I am so disinterested in intimacy that I believe its starting to affect our relationship. We've talked about it, and he wants to help me start to get over this, but I hardly know where to begin.

 

I didn't seek out those pictures, and I never knew how sensitive I could feel. I've never experienced this level of jealousy or anger. I can't even be that mad at him, although he should have deleted them before I, or anyone, would have had a chance to see them, it was bad judgement to keep them, or keep them where they could be found. Live and learn. We've both had past relationships, and that's just a fact that I'm forced to be comfortable with, but I never expected to be exposed to this explicit visual evidence that I just can't erase from my mind.

 

How can I begin to recover from this bite that's changing how I act and feel?

[annabelle75]

I don't want to come across as insensitive, but I think you need some to just be blunt with you. You need to get over it. He didn't do anything wrong. You have no right to be angry or jealous of something he did before you started dating. I also don't think he did anything wrong by still having the pictures. Its a part of his past. This girl doesn't suddenly cease to exist because he has you now. Even if he doesn't have the pictures he will always have the memories. If you can't deal with that, than thats your problem not his.

 

The only person that can fix this for you is you. Just get over it.

[Its_not_personal]

Of course he has memories, I have my own, but they should belong there. His memories shouldn't be in mine, but they are now. I wish I had never seen them. Unfortunately no one has invented eye-bleach yet, so I'll just have to figure out some way to forget I did. Maybe distraction will work for me, or time, or trying to train my mind to think of something great instead of something that stirs up very negative feelings. In any case, your instruction to "just get over it" would be a wonderful contribution to this thread if you had anything else constructive to mention as a means of "getting over it."

[roxy_1980]

Annabelle's right you have to just get over it. Plenty of people take pics of themselves having sex, it happens.

 

As for the images burned in your brain, why after the first one did you keep looking if it was that upsetting? You opened the first one in the folder and thought to yourself, hmmm, that was awful, let's see how much worse I can feel?

 

The price of snoping I guess. The folder/pics probably had some indications of what they were, you chose to open them, rather than just asking him to remove them. You looked at all of the them and you're gonna have to live with that.

[PeterJames]

You would've been eaten away at, not knowing what the pictures were, huh? At least, that's why I think you looked at them. And they are burned into your memory. Peoples past cant be changed, and you know that. You just need to find a way to be happy being intimate, and when that picture comes into your mind, replace it with something. Anything. It really is up to you on how long this pain lasts. Remember. He's yours.

[spunkyteach]

i had the same thing happen to me just the other day. again i was NOT snooping i was actually doing something my bf asked me to do and found some pics. (i have a thread posted about i called "dealing with the past") anyways things snowballed...weve been together for 5 months and nothing bad happened and withing two days i found xrated photos, cds, phone numbers photos of other girls who i was told were "just friends" but found out they chatted on teh phone and she sent him texts and pic messages when she got drunk ( and the girl is married btw) anyways ive had real issues with it too i cant seem to feel good enough now as the girl in the photos was very well endowed and not to mention as i was trying to find a cd of mine and found that he had the nasty photos backed up on a cd...i dont know what to do either..i love him more than life itself and i know we will get over this but i know it wont be anytime too soon...im sorry that someone said to "just get over it" because thats just not possible..it takes time..hope all goes well and ill keep checking this post to see how its goin...hugs to you...

[Bluezone2]

Hi,

 

Without rubbing salt in the wound, how could you discover these pictures "accidentally"? Was your BF actually careless enough to leave these sensitive shots in a directory with other non-sexual pics, where you were more than likely to find them? There are tons of free idiotproof programs out there that allow you to encrypt pictures, hide or password-protect folders, or even hide pictures within other pictures. So my guess is that either you searched for such files or your BF, for some reason, wanted you to see these pictures (maybe he felt guilty about them and wanted an indirect way of telling you about them?).

 

Anyway, I would of course hate it if such a thing happened to me. What I'd do, in your case, would be to confront my SO. I would make sure that the pics are truly deleted (for the record, deleting a file by pressing the delete key doesn't delete anything. If that's what he did, he could recover the pics easy as pie using any kind of undelete software. Make sure he erases them using a secure deletion program). Then, make him promise that he doesn't have any kind of backups or other pics of the same kind with another person. You need to solve the crisis fully. Once he has deleted all the material permanently, and promised he doesn't have anything else, it will be time for you to forgive him and forget. Keep in mind that you can't change the past, whether yours or his. So don't dwell on it.

[Its_not_personal]

I found them completely by accident. I needed some pics of a friend of ours and I didn't have any, but the boyfriend did, spread throughout a plethora of unindexed and unorganized folders. He had permitted me full user rights on his computer, so I cut down on time and just ran a search, and flicked through the results in Windows Media/Fax viewer. I clicked through a ton of cat pics (invisible sandwich, anyone?), lots of family photos and a little porn, and then these popped up, and I was so shocked that I just kept clicking, hoping that there weren't a lot. There weren't. They should have been in a protected folder, zipped up with a password or backed up on a CD and stuffed in a shoebox in the closet. I really didn't care very much that he had them, but just that he'd been careless enough to not keep them where I wouldn't find them. Later I asked him to get rid of them, or at least put them somewhere out of the way, and after some arguing and some tears, he told me that I was more important than the old pictures were, and that he would delete them. He did. And I have never felt more relieved, or loved. In retrospect, that argument hardly put a dent in our relationship, because we were doing great before, and we're doing even better now.

 

But fast forward three months, and here I am, feeling awesome for the most part, yet still troubled by this disturbing and persistent spectre that haunts my bed.

 

I appreciate all the feedback, everyone, and thank you to all who lent your support. I figure the best way to mush out bad memories is by replacing them with really, really good ones instead, and just trying to let everything else go. This is a bull that's going DOWN, cause I'm taking it by the horns...after all, it took mine. More to the point, I've forgiven, and I'm trying to forget, because he's a keeper and I want to be one too!

 

Can anyone recommend some good champagne?