STUDY: 20% of men keep photos of their exes [SCUMBAGS]

couple-kissing.jpegThe fact many of us share so much of our lives online means break-ups can be pretty confusing, do you delete your ex from all your photos? Do you hide all of those cheesy statuses about how smitten you are? Do you go from “single” to “in a relationship” and force your friends to see the little breaking heart symbol in their news feeds (thanks for that btw Zuckerberg)? OK, so it may be the ultimate in First World Problems, but it’s hard to know what to do and the new timeline format makes it easy for anyone and everyone (including potential new love interests) to see all the gory details of your relationship history.

Well it seems that although many of us are quick to try and hide exes from our Facebook profiles, a lot of us will sneakily keep old photos of former partners hidden away, according to a recent study.

The research, commissioned by Friends Reunited (yeah, it’s still kicking around), has found that 21.6 million Brits have kept photographs of past flames (we’re not sure how the research was conducted to come to that conclusion, mind…). It seems that men are more likely to be harbouring a stash of secret images, with 20% of those polled admitting that they have photos of their ex despite being in a new relationship and they keep quiet because they don’t think their new girlfriend would approve, whereas only 9% of women do the same.

The research continues to hate on men, as it suggests 17% feel guilty about keeping photos and that could be because 12% admitted they still have feelings for their old lovers. Ouch. Apparently women claim to keep photos because they don’t want to forget part of their lives. Hmm.

Call us scumbags, but we don’t see the problem with keeping photos of our exes if it reminds us of good times. However, if they feature heavily in a shrine you’ve made to them complete with locks of hair and nail clippings then that’s when your current partner probably needs to worry…

To be honest we’re probably all just reading into these statistics and the fact we have photos of exes will most likely be down to the fact many of us (maybe men more than women) don’t clear out things from our computers enough. Simple.

[Image via DavidMartinHunt’s Flickr]
Becca Caddy

2 comments

  • The research continues to hate on men, as it suggests 17% feel guilty about keeping photos and that could be because 12% admitted they still have feelings for their old lovers. Ouch. Apparently women claim to keep photos because they don't want to forget part of their lives. Hmm.

  • Although I haven't kept any pictures of any ex partners, I haven't gone out the way to erase them out of my life. After being with someone for 8 years and then splitting up, its a large chunk of my life that I'm not about to just forget. They will always have a part of my heart that I gave to them when I was in love I can't simply take that back. So I can kind of understand the need to keep the memories of past loves in picture form (assuming its not dirty pictures of course, thats a whole different matter).There is lot of life details about your partner that you might never know unless you're open enough to talk about their past, all of it including their past partners… you wouldn't ignore their kids, so why their past partners/history etc.

Comments are closed.