My girlfriend and I have a wonderful relationship - I really think she’s the One. But she has pictures of herself with all her ex boyfriends up round her room, and it makes me feel really uncomfortable, as though I’m just another notch on the bedpost. I’ve told her how I feel, but she says that these are her memories - she did promise to take them down, but that was months ago. How can I stop this turning into a much bigger problem than it needs to be?

Susan advises
The key to your problem lies in the very first sentence you write. You say that you feel that your girlfriend is “the One” for you. And then, you describe an issue that hinges round whether she feels that you “the One” for her.

So are those pictures on the wall hard evidence that your girlfriend doesn’t care for you as much as you care for her? Does the fact that she won’t take those pictures down hard evidence that she doesn’t love you in the same way as you love her?

Or could there be other explanations? Is she a person who defines herself by her past, who finds meaning in her life by remembering the people she’s loved in the past as well as the one she loves in the present? Is she feeling pressured by you to let go of her past in a way that makes her feel that you don’t really appreciate her needs?

You need to find out more here, to make a determined effort to understand where your partner coming from. Don’t try to persuade her to take the photos down - or persuade yourself that it’s Ok to leave them up. Instead, simply explore what’s really going on. If you realise that she doesn’t really care, then you have some hard decisions to make. If you realise she does care, then the issue of the pictures may well become irrelevant.