Tuffy Luv Sez: Take A Picture, It’ll Last Longer

By Sara

Record number of questions this week! Sorry to those of you who haven’t been answered–Tuffy’s trying to work her way through as many of them as she can!! In the meantime, keep sendin’ those questions to TuffyLuv@collegecandy.com and I’ll keep answerin’ them, one by one!

Confidential to Terry: Don’t stay with him if you don’t love him. Stop cheating on him and leave him. If you are living with him, please, please move back home with your parents (or other trusted relatives) right away. I wish you so much luck, girl.

Dear Tuffy Luv,

I broke up with my boyfriend of 2 years about a month ago.  Even though I know he’s struggling with the break up, and it’s no walk in the park for me either, we’ve been on pretty good terms.  We chat a few times a week and haven’t fought since the break up.  But I have a favor to ask of him, and I know it’s gonna hurt him because he’ll think I don’t trust him.  I need him to erase the pictures I sent him while we were dating.  It was long distance and I know it was dumb to take the pictures in the first place, but now they’re there, and he has them.

Is there a waiting period for this kind of thing?  It’s not like he’s the kind of guy to send them out to the internet in a fit of bitter rage, even if he was bitter or on less than good terms with me right now.  Even so, eventually, they’ve gotta go.  I’m pretty sure he’ll take offense, and ask why I trusted him with them before and not now (if only because erasing them will be a sign that we’re done for good – which we are).  What do I tell him?  What do I do if he refuses to erase them?

Model Ex

Dear Model Ex,

This is actually a really tough one. Not because it’s tragic or anything, but, like–well, what do you do?

Oh, but that’s my job. So, here goes:

Since you two are on good terms, I do think it’s likely that he’ll be willing to erase them–or, more likely, willing to tell you he’s erasing them. So I guess that’s the real issue, right? How do you know they’re actually gone?

There is, inevitably, this little issue of trust, right? I mean, you yourself think his feelings will be hurt when you ask him to erase them because it would mean you don’t trust him. And there’s something to that. I mean, you did give him the pictures. That means they’re his now.

HOWEVER, I am totally on your side on this one. Even though you gave them to him, you did so while you were in a relationship, to be used as, er, romantic materials while you two were still together. Now that you are not together, Tuffy thinks that makes the contract null and void. If you no longer wish for him to have those pictures now that you don’t have the same relationship, then you should have the right to take them back.

The only problem is, nothing ever disappears from the Internet.

Let this be a lesson to you, kids. Once you take the sexy time pictures and set them free unto the web–well, that’s that. You lose control. Model Ex’s tale could easily be a cautionary one. Fortunately, Model Ex, you’re still on good terms with this guy, so hopefully you’ll have a happy ending (and all the creepsters on the Internet won’t).

So Tuffy’s got this crazy little idea that you may or may not like. Think of it as a sort of funeral for your relationship. Make a plan to meet up with this guy as soon as you can (I know you’re long distance) and have a good, long chat about your relationship and the breakup. Some upsetting stuff might come up, but hopefully it’ll just be a feel-good kind of deal, and either way it’s important closure. As a final act of closure, the two of you can delete those photos together. It’ll be symbolic and crap. No, but really, it’ll be the two of you saying: this was great but now it’s come to an end.

Annnd hopefully he hasn’t backed them up.

Hearts & Skulls,

Tuffy Luv