Breaking news: Local Redditor has an insane opinion. This week’s bizarre opinion comes from, where else, r/UnpopularOpinions, where someone named Joanna_Valdes posted this doozy: “Your significant other should delete EVERY photo of their ex off their phone. There’s absolutely no reason to keep them.”


Advertisement

Unsurprisingly, this nuclear take set people off. One person argued that this isn’t how someone shows they’ve moved on — “Moving on doesn’t mean deleting photos, moving on means being able to look at the photos and not yearn for the person in them.” True!


Other people wanted to know how far back into their dating histories they had to go to prove they’d moved on from all of their exes, with one person asking, “How far does this go? Do I have to delete prom pics if I’m middle aged?” Another wrote, “I’m an adult who shares custody with my ex. We ended amicably and still hang out occasionally for family nights with the kids (like movies and dinners). Am I supposed to delete every picture of our family together to appease some childish ideals of what a new romance should look like?”


A different person added, “This is up there with the opinion that you should throw out any gifts any ex gave you,” which is also a nuclear opinion — what if an ex gave me my TV? That’s a waste of a perfectly good TV!


Many people agreed that deleting explicit photos of exes was the right move, however. They sent those to you when there was a bond and level of trust between the two of you that no longer exists.


Ultimately, most commenters were in agreement that deleting all photos isn’t necessary, and that someone holding on to photos, more often than not, simply means that they were too lazy to delete them. Even if that isn’t the reason, and they’re holding onto them for nostalgic or personal reasons, that’s fine, too — people are allowed to look back at past relationships with fondness or positive feelings without it being a betrayal of their current relationship. At least in mature adult relationships, that is — I can’t speak to the kind of relationships OP is involved in.


As one commenter put it, “It’s really weird when people expect their partners to pretend like previous relationships didn’t exist. If someone could so easily throw away reminders of a person who once meant a lot to them, I’d see that as a little cold-hearted.”