How to Know If You Should Delete Everything After A Breakup
In 2012, I went through my first of two catastrophic breakups. To help me process the breakup, my friends thought it’d be a good idea to take my phone and delete all evidence of the relationship. They deleted every message he'd sent. They deleted him off Facebook. And they deleted his number. But I couldn’t handle it. I was not ready to stop re-reading our conversations.
Our relationship had been a whirlwind. I was head over heels in love with him. I thought he was ‘The One’. But the intensity of our relationship coupled with the speed of the breakup made me question whether what my experience was with him had actually been real. I started to doubt myself. I felt like I must have made it up. Was there something wrong with me? Had any of this even happened?
I needed to re-read the messages as proof that it wasn't all in my head. So when they took my phone and deleted everything, it set back my healing process.
In this episode of The Date with Confidence Podcast, I’m sharing my thoughts on the commonly asked question “Should I delete everything after my breakup?”.
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When I went through my second catastrophic breakup, I remember listening to a podcast on breakups and the advice being given was to get rid of everything that reminds you of them. Delete all the messages, throw out all the photos, destroy any evidence of them.
Hearing this advice gave me anxiety. When everything was deleted and taken away from me without me being ready, I was unable to process the breakup and heal on my own terms.
So the second time, when I was also much older, as soon as we split up I took down all photos of us, I removed him from my phone background and I put everything that reminded me of him in a suitcase and stored it away.
And gradually over time, as I went through each phase of the healing process, I got rid of something else.
Should you get rid of everything after a breakup?
The honest answer is, it's down to you and how you feel about things. If you throw away their stuff, if you delete your conversations, if you delete your photos of each other, if that is something that's going to empower you, make you feel stronger and make you feel better about the breakup, then absolutely delete everything.
But if you're in a really fragile state, where perhaps the breakup was a shock, perhaps it was unexpected, you found out there was cheating involved, or it just happened overnight (like my two big breakups happened to me) in those instances, it's okay to take your time. You don't have to delete everything immediately.
When you go through a breakup, you've already lost a person, you've already lost a certain type of future that you've created in your mind and to then delete everything straight away, whilst, yes, it can be completely healing for some people, it can also make the loss feel worse, because now you also don't have the memories, the happy times, the things that remind you of them.
It takes time to process a breakup
When it comes to deleting stuff after a breakup, it can be a process. It has to be your decision, and I don't think anyone can make that decision for you. It was really traumatic for me when my friends deleted every trace of my ex. I was in a really vulnerable state. I know that they did it from a good place, I know they did it because they wanted to help me. They thought I deserved better and they wanted to help me move on. But it actually had the opposite effect and that meant that it took me a much longer time to process the breakup.
If you're struggling to make that decision, just do it bit by bit. Maybe pack their stuff away in a suitcase and put it out of your mind. Maybe store it away in a drawer. Maybe get rid of three things. Or delete one photo a day.
Just do it gradually so that you're processing things on your own timeline because that's going to be more beneficial in the long run than trying to force yourself into processing, into healing, into being better and out the other side of the breakup when that might not necessarily be what's right for you.
