分手后该不该扔掉旧情人的信物?

When Pamela Seow broke up with her boyfriend a few years ago, she cut up his photos, shredded his love letters and threw away almost every gift and piece of clothing he had given her, including 'a bag that looked like a dead rooster.'

'If it's over, it's over,' says the 28-year-old marketing representative. 'I don't believe in holding on to a lost cause.'

Still, Ms. Seow made one exception to her purge: She hung on to Doggy, a stuffed animal given to her by her former partner that she likes to cuddle when she sleeps. 'It's really more out of habit than for sentimental reasons,' she says.

What do you do with the detritus of a former relationship? Torch everything? Sell the diamonds? Squirrel away the love letters and photos in the attic?

The decision can be complicated, depending not just on the amount of hurt and anger you have coming out of the relationship, but also on how practical and forward-thinking you are.

Take Ms. Seow, who lives in Singapore. She tossed out the physical remnants of her last relationship because she doesn't want to have to explain to a future boyfriend why she kept mementos from a previous one. 'And a woman needs all the closet space she can get,' she says.

Go ahead and ask your friends what they get rid of when a relationship ends. You'll learn a lot about them, I promise. I asked, and one of my close pals told me of a favorite chair he and his ex spent a fair amount of time in -- together, if you know what I mean. After the breakup, he carted it to the curb. 'You can't keep flipping the cushions every time a new person comes along,' he says.

I've since talked to people who have sent sheets, pillows and mattresses off to Goodwill, tossed spices that reminded them of favorite recipes cooked with an ex and burned the plants a former lover left behind.

Some people even make a ritual of the eradication. 'It's a physical or magical way of trying to get rid of bad feelings and bad memories,' says Elyse Goldstein, a psychologist with a private practice in Manhattan. 'It's minimizing the importance of the person, as if to say, 'I'm throwing you in the trash.''

After Liz Garcia caught her live-in boyfriend cheating on her a year ago, she kicked him out, invited her friends over and built a bonfire, she said in an email interview.

Into the flames, she tossed everything that reminded her of her ex -- the golf bag and Xbox he'd left behind, the CDs, DVDs and books they'd bought together, and all of the stuffed animals and clothes he'd given to her. As a final offering, she threw the framed San Diego Chargers jersey her ex had cherished into the fire. 'It was therapeutic,' says Ms. Garcia, 30, a waitress in Los Angeles.

Laura Haushalter got her short-haired pointer, Briar, to help her dispose of a teddy bear that played a recording of her ex-boyfriend saying, 'I love you.' She played tug-of-war with the dog until the stuffed animal started falling apart.

Then she pulled out the bear's voice box, attempted to crush it with her shoe and ultimately ran it over with her car. 'The voice was gone and with it, resolution achieved,' says Ms. Haushalter, 27, an analyst for the federal government in Washington.

Even as some people go to extremes to rid themselves of anything that reminds them of their exes, others stubbornly cling to items, sometimes despite the associations.

A friend of mine still carries the leather wallet his ex-girlfriend gave him several years ago. 'Why spend money on something when you already have a perfectly good one?' he says.

Allison Soltani, 31, of Great Neck, N.Y., kept the Louis Vuitton bag an ex bought her. Val Valentine, 65, of Huntington Beach, Calif., hung on to a photo of his ex-wife taken with the actor Telly Savalas in the early 1980s. Stephen Doty, 48, of Salem, Mass., left his ex-girlfriend's birth control on a shelf in the bathroom. And Kindra Hall, 29, of Phoenix, saved the black-lace panties with a hot-pink bow she bought to impress her college boyfriend.

This, of course, begs the question: Should you keep the lingerie? It seems creepy to me.

And what about all that other stuff? OK, the bed may be too unwieldy or expensive to replace. But why do we keep so many other objects that remind us of something that is painful, bittersweet or, at the very least, simply over?

Here's why:

-- We're trying to hang on to our personal narrative. Like Dennis Martinez, who keeps a box of photos of previous girlfriends, as well as all the cards and letters they sent him.

'One day my grandchildren might think their granddad is old and lame, until I bust out the dusty box of old flings,' says Mr. Martinez, 28, who works at an insurer in New York.

-- The item is actually worth something. A friend of mine has kept nude photos of an ex taken by a well-known photographer for more than a decade, hoping they will increase in value. And Jackie Gray, 45, who runs a department for a consulting firm in Arlington Heights, Ill., has been hanging on to a painting by an up-and-coming artist that her ex-husband gave her, despite hating it. 'Who knows, it might pay a semester of my daughter's college one day,' she says.

-- The object looks good in your house -- and your ex wants it back. More than a decade ago, Robert Pillitteri's then-girlfriend gave him an antique print of Italy's Mt. Etna. Then she changed her mind, asked for it back and offered up a print of a Chinese water wheel instead.

Mr. Pillitteri, 61, an investor and actor in Seattle, now has both hanging in his den. 'The artistic value of the first piece grew significantly for me as the entreaties to return it continued,' he says.

-- You just want it. That's why Jen Campsey, 40, a human-resources consultant in San Francisco, has kept the 'Rock Band' videogame her ex-boyfriend gave her for Christmas one year, even though he took the Xbox with him. 'I loved playing it,' she says. 'And how hard is it to find another guy with an Xbox?'

-- It makes you feel better. When Angela Mancinelli's husband left her after 25 years, she says, she kept the two toy pig statues that her Korean mother-in-law gave the couple for good luck while they were married. One, dressed as a doctor, was meant to represent her husband; the other, dressed as a nurse, represents Ms. Mancinelli, 51, who lives in Hershey, Pa.

'The doctor doll is now a functional pin cushion,' she says.