Have Nudes of Your Ex? Here’s When To Delete Them.

“Let me see that.”

I hand my phone across the table to my buddy’s girlfriend.

“That picture is of the front. The others are from the side.”

She flips left instead of right.

Her eyes go wide.

“Hello!”

“What?” And then it hit me. I forgot about a few of the images I hadn’t yet deleted. Nudes of my ex. My buddy’s girlfriend hands the phone back to me.

“I’m sure you miss those.”

“I do.”

Pocketing the phone, the table’s conversation goes sideways as others ask what she saw.

I’m just glad she didn’t press play.

Stranded in South Bend, Send Nudes

As someone who now lives in the modern era of dating, I’ve received my share of nudes. In a way, the easy prompting and access to such pictures have, sadly, desensitized me to the entire experience.

My first nude came from my ex-wife.

I grew up in a time where the “cool” kids had pagers in middle school. Why a 12-year-old would need a pager beats me, but pagers gave way to phones weighing more than textbooks, and eventually flip phones.

When I waited overnight for that first Apple iPhone (yup, dork) receiving nudity at the press of a button never registered.

Being film students one would assume, and assume correctly, we used camera equipment to film more than just class projects (little tip, nobody looks good in night vision).

The first nude came after I graduated college. I finished a semester before my-then girlfriend and landed a job offer with a crummy South Bend production studio. So, fresh out of school and eager to start work, I jumped at the opportunity.

It was a strange time for technology. Video chat wasn’t really a thing at the time. AOL had been replaced by Facebook, but even that left much to be desired. So we called when we could and emailed when that didn’t prove possible.

To keep intimacy as strong as possible we went down the now all too familiar path of sending provocative images.

Of course, we had to email them as the pictures kept downloading like an image sponsored by LEGO.

I no longer have those images. I don’t know at what point I deleted them.

Probably when I received higher resolution ones on my phone. Those I kept for a long time. Even after our marriage went south and we went our separate ways.

A Physical Connection or an Emotional One?

My buddy’s girlfriend didn’t press play.

But I did.

Rewatching a snapshot in time. A memory gone to the world. Sometimes I found it gratifying to watch. Other times it had nothing to do with any physical response.

A moment of intimacy now forever lost.

I pressed play again.

I didn’t want to lose that. I wanted to hold onto it for as long as I could. But that was the problem. I needed to let it go. Not because she no longer had a connection with me and it would be the right thing to do. But because I needed to let my own mind walk away. To free itself. Everywhere I went my brain dragged along the ball and chain of lost intimacy.

It started as a physical connection, but in the end, it lingered as an emotional one.

Deleting to Let Go

A necessary purge comes after every relationship. Flushing emotions, detoxing memories. You can’t move forward if you’re looking behind.

But if you delete the nude, you’ll probably never get another one of that person?

That’s the point.

That’s the purpose of moving on. Of ridding it from your life, because in many ways, it leads to more bad than good.

I knew every frame of those final images. The final videos. The small mole on her right breast. The way my hand cupped her cheek. The concentration in her eyes. Yet the more I watched the more ingrained it became. Months after she’d moved out, it had the opposite response of its intent. It made me sad. It made me miss the mole and the cheek and her eyes.

In order to move on, it needed to be expunged from my life.

Closing That Chapter of Life

Nude swapping has become so prevalent I’m surprised I haven’t been slapped in the face by a random body part being digitally sent through airways.

In most instances, there’s an emotional disconnect. There’s nothing mentally connecting a recipient to the sender. It’s no different than watching someone you know on an adult website.

Nudes sent as a means of intimacy are different. While designed to entice and excite they are also designed to strengthen. These are often different. They aren’t masked in shadows or only done at high angles. Pictures sent in the midst of a relationship don’t require the covering of stretch marks or the hiding of thinning hair. There’s a raw, exposed nature to these images. A true definition of one’s self. A “love me for who I am.”

Images sent through dating apps and from people whose names I struggle to remember have no meaning. They are easily deleted because the people are easily replaced.

They had no story with me. They had no end as they had no beginning.

I think I struggled with finally deleting those images of my ex-wife because it represented another chapter closing. Another period written.

I felt, in a strange way, I owed it to her to delete them.

For a while I sat, phone on, image up, my mind jumping through excuses. Pointing at why I should just shut the phone off because I’d regret deleting them. Yet my finger, ever so done with listening to my brain, acted on its own swiped, checked, and deleted.

And that was it.

When I picked the phone up it felt different. Like it was missing something. My chest felt different as well. It didn’t know how to feel. My brain pouted at never being able to see her nude again.

But my head came around as it stretched itself out, free of the weight those images caused.

So, when should a nude of your ex be deleted?

It depends on how quickly you want to heal.

Because eventually, you’ll need to let go. The sooner you do the better.