That’s exactly what happened to my current boyfriend, whom we’ll refer to as Boyfriend from here on out.
We’ve been dating for nearly a year, so I spend a considerable amount of time at his apartment. And as I started to nest in this new space, I began to run into mysterious ex-girlfriend possessions.
I wanted to say the relationship shrapnel didn’t bother me, but with each new thing, a new irrational emotional reaction would bubble up inside of me and I just wanted it to stop. I shrugged the things off at first—we’re both adults with past relationships, it’s not that big a deal.
But as our relationship continued to grow and we got more serious, I’d feel that reaction get stronger every time I’d see something that belonged to an ex. I’m not sure what it was, really. I’ve never been a crazy possessive type, and we had a confident, amazing relationship, but something about these items bothered me.
They felt like small reminders of the fact that there had been people he loved before me, which—as silly as it sounds—stings. I ignored these things for months but once I’d started to treat his place like mine, I decided there was only one thing that could be done: We needed to clean up shop.
The hair conditioner
We were sharing a morning shower and as I ran conditioner through my hair I suddenly paused and wondered: wait, why does he have conditioner? I turned to him and asked about it, and in the haze of the half-awake, pre-coffee hour he stood speechless as he immediately realized what I did: It belonged to his ex. I threw a squirt of it at him, squeezed the rest down the drain, and then dove my head under the shower trying to get it off of my head as fast as I could.
Not the classiest move, but effective. I would have rather spent the day taming frizzy, dry hair than to know that traces of his ex girlfriend were literally hanging on my head.
The letters
It began when I was looking for a pen. I was rummaging through a drawer and saw the peek of a photo. Because I’m exceptionally nosy, I dug up handfuls of photos, holiday cards, and hand written letters on notebook paper. Questions immediately flooded my mind: Are these love letters? Why did she have wide ruled notebook paper? Was he dating a student? Was she a hotter, 19-year-old version of me? Oh God. Make it stop.
I decided I needed to handle this maturely and tuned into my inner-Beyoncé, even though I wanted to act like Solange. I ended up organizing his desk drawers and made a baggie of sentiments he could keep hidden far away from me. That’s when I stumbled upon the jewelry.
The jewelry
During what he referred to as Drawer-gate (and what I referred to as Extreme Drawer Makeover), I found a few pieces of jewelry, none of which were mine. A tangled chain necklace (cheap), a pink hair tie (cheesy), a power bead bracelet (huh?), and a set of rhinestone costume earrings from J. Crew. The necklace, hair tie, and bracelet immediately went into the garbage and as I was about to toss the earrings, I took a closer look. They were actually pretty cute. Would that be totally weird if I kept them? They sort of matched my outfit, and whoever the previous owner was clearly wasn’t looking for them.
I belong to the church of Jenna Lyons, so the blasphemy of tossing a piece of her empire seemed wrong. But by the look on his face, I could tell that Boyfriend knew what I was thinking/thought I was insane, so I said a little prayer to the fashion gods and into the trash bin they went. I still sort of regret that one.
The painting
Boyfriend had a painting leaning on a wall that a friend had made for his birthday. The picture was mostly of a grassy field in Central Park, and he was to the left catching a frisbee. Over to the right corner, there was the back of a girl with long brown hair, sitting in the corner of the field watching. The mystery girl was the ex girlfriend (of four years, I might add). I didn’t notice her in it for weeks, but once I did it was the only thing I could think about.
His reasoning for keeping it out: A friend took the time to paint it for him, and it has nothing to do with his ex or lingering feelings. My reason for wanting it gone: I didn’t want this creepy ghost of a girlfriend sitting right in front of me every day. This one took a lot of coaxing, but eventually the painting ended up getting stored in the back of the closet. My advice to you: Don’t throw a territorial tantrum about something like this. Instead, appeal to his emotions and you understand it was a thoughtful gift from a friend, but you’re the one who has to spend time in the bedroom, not said friend. That was when he conceded and moved it to the closet, though I still hate that painting.
The bed
Now that we had started to mentally sage the joint, there was one part of his apartment left: the bed. I started to notice all these little things about his mattress that had never previously bothered me. Every lumpy little hole from a former spoon session felt like a crater and every poking spring from never-to-be-discussed sexual activities felt like a prodding spike.
I needed this thing gone, and I needed it gone now. But considering that mattresses are heavy, large, and expensive, I knew this was going to be trickier than throwing things in the garbage or washing them down the drain. I needed something affordable, something that wasn’t going to need hired help to set up, and preferably something that felt like an upgrade that I could claim as the real reason his bed needed replacing.
I got online and googled “awesome new mattress,” clicked on the first thing that popped up and discovered a trending new startup called Casper.
Their mattresses were made of a fancy new latex foam and memory foam combo that supposedly resulted in the perfect mix of temperature control and support. Innovation excuse, check. But what really hooked me was that these mattresses can compress and roll up, and therefore get shipped to you in a box that can fit in the trunk of a car, no movers required. Sold.
I ordered one immediately. When it arrived a few days later in a happy striped box, it was actually really fun to open up and roll out together. Our new bed was ready in under 5 minutes and I’m actually even using the giant box as a standing desk while typing this story. Whoever runs the ship at Casper, you guys totally saved me.
Conclusions
All in all, I had negotiated the ins and outs of ex-girlfriend collateral for a few weeks and the peaceful results made it worth every awkward moment. Our relationship feng-shui was balanced. We were refreshed, happy, in love and his newly made over place felt new, clean, and like it was more ours. And, although this might be the memory foam talking, I even sleep better knowing that if we made it through this, we have a pretty solid future in front of us.
This article originally appeared on StyleCaster.
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