Why you should keep love letters, mementos from your exes

I didn't have weeping over a seven-year-old Valentine's Day note on my bingo card for this week — but hey, life can always surprise you.

- Helen Coffey

The unexpected journey into soppy nostalgia was prompted by an initially casual, then fiercely impassioned, debate in the office. The hot topic on the table: should you keep mementos — love letters, cards, photos, keepsakes — from exes? Or does it prevent you from moving on? And could clinging onto those totems of the past be deemed disrespectful to your new partner, particularly if the pair of you are moving in together? Our water cooler chat chimed with an episode of the latest Black Mirror; entitled “Eulogy”, it follows Phillip (Paul Giamatti) as he mines his memories of a recently deceased ex-girlfriend for poignant moments that can feature in her “immersive” memorial service. But it’s no simple task — in a fit of pique after their devastating breakup, Phillip all but erased the love of his life from existence, scratching out her face from old photos and redacting every line she ever wrote to him in thick, impenetrable marker.