Please help me stop ruining my relationship

[Sheep]

I know this is stupid but I'm so jealous of my Fiancée's ex. It's not even his most recent ex but a girl he claimed was the rebound of another girl. They were together for about 3 years and apparently were more like best friends and thats why they drifted apart. He still has loads of photos of her though and talks about her a fair bit. He has been engaged before about 5 or 6 years ago to someone else and he told me she was the girl he loved more than anyone else in his past, whci I could understand and am fine with but she broke it off a few months before their wedding. Then he met the ex who I have such a problem with. Suddenly he changed his mind the other night and told me he loved her more than the girl he was previously going to marry and equal to me. I know jealousy is stupid but it drives me crazy and I can't get it out of my head. It keeps causing arguments and I'm scared it will destroy our relationship. He wont get rid of the photos as he wants them as a reminder of all the good times they shared and he frequently tells me stories about their past which he doesn't do with any of his other exes including the most recent one. It really hurts and makes me feel like I'm competing and I'll never quite be good enough compared to her. she was about 5 years older than him and I'm 10 years younger. It's got to the point where I'm self destructive about it, like when he showed me a photo of her I said she's very pretty and he said, yeah, she's beautiful. It just fills me with complexes and I know it's my problem not his. What do I do?

[jMarkt]

Wait what? He said he loves her more than the girl he was goin to marry?

So.. he's been engaged before and he broke it off because he was still in love with his best friend? And he won't let her go even though he's with you now?

I understand keeping something special to you in your memory and keeping pictures and such.. but you make it sound like he is still very much in love with her.

I'm not sure what to say about this one so I'll wait for other posts.

[vashti]

Why is he showing you photos of that girl? It sounds like he is trying to fuel your insecurity. He sounds like an ass. Are you sure you want him?

[Gigabitch]

Ouch. We can help you stop ruining your relationship, but we can't help with the LARGE part of this that is not your fault at all. Long story short: you are competing, and you'll never win because he's got an idealized version of this person in his head that is only going to get rosier as time goes on.

Would it be true to say that she drifted away from him rather than that they drifted apart? Because I would think that if they had become friends and drifted apart, he'd be over her, and he clearly is not. He should not get rid of the pictures, but he should put them away. It's like he's two minutes away from building an altar to her in the corner of your bedroom.

What if you told him you'd like for him to get it out of his system? Tell him you'll spend an evening talking about her, her, her. Your jealousy will be put on hold- you'll be allowed to throw a major tantrum in the morning if he's allowed to go on about her ad nauseum, and it might be a nice release for both of you.

You see, I think it's possible he's not missing her so much as the way she used to make him feel, or something about himself he felt he lost when they split up. Most people are, at the core, appallingly self-involved. If you can find some way to figure out what it is that he thinks he's missing and get him to believe he can get it from you or that he doesn't need it, she will recede into memory like a dream.