2Nd marriages and relationship etiquette

I have only been married once but my husband and I are both children of divorce and I think it's reasonable to keep wedding pictures around (not displayed, but available) for the children to look at if they want. The marriage is a fact, it happened, and children resulted from it.

I would try really hard not to feel threatened by the past (unless your future husband gives you an actual reason to feel threatened), but just to see that album as an object that might be of interest to the children and nothing more significant.

I still have my wedding album from my first marriage. I keep it tucked away in a box, but I know at some point my daughter with my ex who is 8 might want those photos. She was only a baby when we split so she has no memories of us together and there’s very few photos of her with both of us. Maybe he just put it in the side table for now until he figured out where he could store it at a later time.

I have a very bitter relationship with my ex he shook my daughter when she was 3 weeks old, so I trashed my wedding album however my sister has pictures of my wedding on FB in her photos. my kids wanted to see me as a bride so I showed them if he keeps it for the kids to see that is one thing but if he is looking at it reminiscing that is something else

I was married for 9 yrs and have 2 children from that relationship. Like you, I tossed all my wedding photos and pretty much any memorabilia of my previous relationship. I do not regret doing that. But I can also understand that some people are more apt to keep those items to document their life histories. If I was in your position, I imagine I would feel the same way simply because I automatically expect my fiancé to make the choice that I would make (yeah, I know, I am working on that). If you have doubts about the reason he is keeping them it’s probably better to ask rather than to have this create unnecessary tension.

If we had kids I would have saved it but we didnʻt so I trashed everything.

I have never seen a picture of my fiancé with his ex and Iʻm sure itʻd make me feel some type of way.

Politely ask him to put it away for the kids in a keepsake box and put it at the back of his closet

Maybe he put it in his bedside table because he didn't quite know where it should go, and felt like that is "his" table (as opposed to an attic or a closet that you share equally)?

You can open the dialogue. Just be open about it and don't go into it with prejudice. It's reasonable to request that this item is in a more "storage" area than a personal area.

I thought our relationship was completely rock solid up until a few weeks ago when this happened. Now I'm starting to question it because of several things that happened all at once and then starting to question little things from before this that I never gave a second thought to. And I don't know if my insecurities are completely psyching me out and I'm being unreasonable or if all of my thoughts and feelings are completely reasonable or some mix of both.
As far as the wedding album, I don't think he's looking at it reminiscing, I found it buried in one of 3 boxes that have been sitting in the corner of our bedroom for the past year since we moved in together. I think he put it in the bedside table just to get rid of it and hide it quick. However shortly after this he made a comment to his parents that he's already had a big wedding and he's not inviting his family to ours (outside of immediate family) because he wants me to invite whoever I want, as this is my first "wedding." That hit a wrong nerve for me as I felt that he was saying our wedding wasn't as important as his first. That one I did bring up to him and told him I was hurt and he apologized and then later brought up he thinks he said it because he feels like a failure since his first marriage didn't work out and doesn't want to admit that to people by inviting people to a second wedding. He stopped talking after that. Initially when we got engaged he wanted me to take his last name, which as a super independent woman, I need some time to think about it. I've tried to talk through it a few times with him since and now he's trying to convince me not to take his name at all. I still don't know for sure what I'm going to do, but one of the reasons I had concerns with taking his name was because his ex kept his last name when they divorced and just didn't feel special to do so. A few months ago I asked him to get new checks as he's still using checks with his exes name on them, he agreed but hasn't done anything about it yet. I understand the practical side of keeping old checks as I've done it in the past but now that our wedding is only a few months aways a $35 fee for new checks isn't much to ask. And to top everything else off we're having physical intimacy issues that are probably medically related to stuff going on with him, which I understand, just makes me feel worse with other stuff.

My father has been married three times before he married my mother, she’s his fourth wife, he’s her second husband (for context, he adopted me and my sister and is the father that my ‘birth dad’ never was). Both parents have their old wedding videos and wedding albums, granted, my late grandmother (father’s mother) cut out all the ex-wives from the photos so the albums are all missing the bride lol.

We actually appreciate the nostalgia of them and every few years we get together to watch all the wedding videos and go through the albums and we really love it. For my parents it really reiterates that they took some time to find each other and it kind of reminds them how appreciative they are to have found each other in the end.

Personally, I think that asking or expecting your partner to get rid of the wedding album would be equivalent to asking or expecting him to just forget the 20+ years he spent with the mother of his children. While it is a closed chapter of his life, it still is a chapter of his life and it won’t go away merely because he’s moved on to a new chapter with you. I think him putting it in his bedside drawer was just a matter of convenience because he didn’t really know where else to put it in that moment (god knows, my own partner dumps things in his bedside drawer if he can’t think where to put something).

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Reading this comment, I don't think the issue here is the albums. I think it is more that (1) your partner underestimates how much certain things mean to you, and (2) there are some underlying insecurities you have about your relationship which are perhaps have made you sensitive to some of the smaller things.

If there are quite a few things causing tension which all come back to the ex-wife, whether he has done (or not done) things because of practicality/laziness or something else, you might have to sit down together and establish your boundaries and get the point across that it is important to you for him to take steps and do certain things to help with this relationship you two are now in, like get a new cheque book.

View Quoted Comment The check thing gives me pause. Are you sure she’s off the checking account? Both ex and I had to provide notarized statements that we both approved of me being removed from our joint checking. That was vital to the divorce when dividing marital assets.
I would be cautious of being added to any accounts of his until you can verify she is not also on there, as account holder, designee or with signature authority.
I can’t speak to the strength of your relationship, but some things for me need to be a “hell yes!” or I’m not moving forward. There is no doubt in my mind he’d rather walk over a football field filled with burning legos than have anything to do with his ex.

View Quoted Comment Yes she's removed off the accounts. We've already had a financial discussion to keep our finances completely separate, as we've both been seriously screwed financially by our exes, with the door left open to have one joint account that we could each transfer money into to make paying bills easier if we feel that to be necessary layer down the line. We met and began dating 3 years after his divorce, and 5 years after mine, though for the first few years after mine, my ex and daughters father was still in our lives.

I think you have looked into it waaaayyy too much already. He prob put it in side table to avoid an awkward moment of looking at his wedding photos w his FIANCÉE!!!
Last name - maybe he realized it was important for u to keep ur own? That’s ok too. On social media and for friends and family u will probably automatically be Mrs. whatever his last name is
And lastly about the checks... men just do not get it. You can ask a guy to fix something in the house and it takes them weeks... not because they don’t care but maybe it’s low on his priority list.From what you mentioned I really do think you are overthinking

So my dad was previously married and divorced before him and my mom were married. No kids, pretty sure his ex cheated on him and really hurt him, but I don't know the story. My dad had a heavy duty safe in his home office where he kept all of our important documents and some valuable items. He never gave anyone else the combination. Thirteen years ago he passed away and and my mom had to have a locksmith come to break open the safe so we could get my passport and other needed documents, and inside she found a photo of his ex-wife and an engagement ring and wedding band set that she had never seen before.

She was and still is, so upset, more than a decade later. My dad had a lot of trauma in his life and put up walls, had a difficult time expressing emotions, and was not a great communicator, but he was incredibly honest, loyal, and fair and I don't doubt his commitment to our family at all. I don't think his actions were a reflection of anything having to do with our family, but rather how he coped with his past.

I think there are people who like to erase all sentiments of the past and pretend it didn't exist or have it exist only in memory, and then there are people who feel like the painful parts of their past are still very much a part of their history and how they came to be and they hold onto things that help remind them of their growth and how far they have come.

I had an ex-boyfriend who insisted I delete every single photo of him from social media after we broke up. I untagged him in all the photos and deleted any that were couple-y, but refused to do a full wipe of my account because he was in nearly every single photo of my life for three years, including pictures of other relationships/people that were important to me and that I didn't have other photos of, and I didn't want to delete every photographic memory I had of my life in college. For years after, he would reach out to me every so often to tell me to delete every last photo of him, long after we stopped talking and I cared at all about what was happening in his life.

If your FH was married for 20 years and shares children with his ex, I think its fair for some photos of that time to exist, particularly if they have an amicable relationship now. His daughter in particular might want to see photos of what her parents wedding looked like, and the family photos that exist from when his sons were growing up should still be allowed to exist. He put the album in his bedside table likely because its not a "shared" place and he doesn't want you to have to notice it, not so much because its easy for him to access or he's trying to "hide" it from you. Also none of the other things seem like red flags. He wants you to have the wedding you never had. Many people feel it is important for the woman to take the man's last name when they marry (while not doing this has become more common than it was, I still think most couples that marry go this route still). He's sad that his first marriage didn't last. All of this seems very normal and non-concerning to me. Perhaps worth a discussion and clarifying feelings on, but nothing that to me suggests your FH isn't serious about your relationship, his commitment to you, or your upcoming wedding.

The check thing would bother me, but as a previous poster said, some people and men in particular are just really into convenience and don't want to be bothered with replacing something that still works, sort of. He may not realize how much the check thing bothers you, and you may need to really drive home that seeing his exes name on his checks is hurtful and insulting. I think if he understood the extent to which it makes you feel negatively, he'd probably make getting new checks more of a priority.