Woman discovers husband's secret box of 'mementos;' 'Should I confront him?! I'm freaked out.' UPDATED 2X

When this woman is creeped out by her husband, she asks the internet:

"I (26F) found out that my husband (27M) has been keeping a secret box of “mementos” on the top shelf of our closet and I don’t know what to do about it or if I should even bring it up?"

I (26F) found out that my husband (27M) has been keeping a secret box of “mementos” on the top shelf of our closet and I don’t know what to do about it or if I should even bring it up.

I honestly don’t know how the hell I’m supposed to talk about this, I genuinely am in disbelief.

So backstory my husband (let’s call him Lee) and I have been together since our sophomore year in highschool. We were each others first everythings, and for the most part I feel like we honestly have a picturesque marriage.

I’m currently five months pregnant with our first child, and have taken it upon myself to DIY the guest bedroom into a nursery, but to do that I wanted to sort through the stuff in there and get rid of anything unnecessary.

I think it’s relevant to say that I’m pretty short (5’2) so I don’t really store things up high since I can’t reach, but my husband’s a foot taller than me so he doesn’t have this tendency. Which is how I found the “memento” box on the top shelf.

It was just a plain cardboard box, so i didn’t think much of it at first, but since I didn’t remember putting it up there I wanted to see if it was something that needed to go into storage or if it was just junk.

I don’t know what I was expecting, but inside the box there was a photo album, a trash bag, and a black leather bag. The album just had my name plus Lee’s written on the cover, so I thought it’d be something sweet- because Lee has a tendency to gift me sentimental things- but no.

The album was full of nude pictures of myself, all of them marked with dates and a short journal like entry! The first one was from our first time from when we were teens, and the latest one was marked from the night I surprised him with my pregnancy announcement.

Most of the pictures are poor quality, but some are clearly of me sleeping after the “deed”. These journal entries talk about how he ranks each experience and his favorite part of it- like some weird log book?

Inside the bags were some of my lingerie and even some old razors and hair brushes? I don’t know why on earth he keeps them, but he has two bags full!

I don’t know how- or what- to do. I mean is this normal behavior? Is this some twisted form of romance on his part? A part of me feels like I shouldn’t feel as disgusted as I am, but this violates my own boundaries since I explicitly told him in the past that I was against sending or giving him any nude photos.

Reddit what do I do, I love my husband, but I’m not sure how to confront him about this?

Before we give you OP's updates, let's take a look at some top responses:

savleighhh: No, this is not normal. At all. This is also not romantic. At all. The fact that he took pictures of you sleeping and has them in an album is incredibly concerning. Him ranking times yall had se% is setting off more red flags.

This is creepy and inappropriate behavior. I can’t imagine my fiancé taking pictures of me sleeping let alone him keeping a log of our sex life! Girl you have to show him the box and demand answers and don’t go easy on him. None of this is okay or normal and you should really be concerned as to why he thinks any of that is okay

love2rp4: Taking creepy pictures of you as you sleep naked, and having naked photos of you as a minor in general, and then rating every se%ual experience with you is not normal at all. The lingerie too and the razors and hair brushes make it even creepier. This is creepy obsessed stalker shit.

agah: Nope. Not normal. Your feeling violated is incredibly warranted, this behaviour is wrong on so many levels. He’s got some type of fixation/ritual, I’m worried about hidden cameras (please check), and call him the hell out on all of this and find out what’s causing it. The man needs heavy duty therapy with a certified sexual therapist, immediately.

Update 1 (5 months later):

Update: So I’m not sure if anyone cares, and while I didn’t reply to any of the comments, I did end up talking with my husband about this just a few days ago.

I’m not going to lie I wanted to just act like I didn’t see anything and go on with my happy life, but after giving birth to my baby girl about a month and a half ago, I guess the stress and everything added up and I let it slip in an argument.

I don’t remember all that was said, but I was exhausted and my husband (while he’s been super helpful and took over the household chores for me and helps out with babygirl) had just been getting on my nerves, I sort of exploded on him in a way I’m not proud of.

Worst of all he wasn’t even doing anything, all he had been doing was reminiscing about how I used to make a Sims family of us when I was in uni, and how creepy it was (he said it endearingly).

I don’t really know why I got so mad, but I basically said something along the lines of how he’s the creepy one because he has a secret stash of stuff hidden from me.

I felt really bad because he got all pale and went quiet, and then he sort of said he needed “space” and went to blow off some steam at the shooting range (which he does a lot when he needs to think so I didn’t question it).

He came back home around dinner and said he was ready to talk. I asked him about all of the things I found, especially the photos. I reminded him again that I never agreed to making nudes of any sort, and he apologized and agreed to burn them.

Apparently our history goes back further than even I knew, as he recounted that we actually met before highschool.

I had no idea but his mom (who’s a divorce attorney) was the very same one my mom used when she separated from her first husband (not my dad). I called my mom after to confirm, and she told me it was true, but her and my MIL never told me because my mom’s divorce was messy and she hates talking about it.

Anyways back to the first meeting thing. My MIL (at the time) often had Lee hang out around her office after school, and it was during one of these days that my mom had to take me with her to speak with MIL in person. Lee was actually the boy that I played with in the waiting room? I can’t believe he remembered that, because I totally forgot it?

So according to him that that first meeting was the day “he knew” I was special. Lee told me that while he had tried to pass it off as a crush, as he got older it never really went away, which led him to look into his mom’s case files

(in my state attorneys have to keep them for 7 years), and he found my mom on Facebook, then my dad in her friends list and managed to find my first and last name in order to find my Instagram.

He had convinced his parents to let him transfer from his private K-12 school to my public highschool (using the excuse that they had a better athletics program- which isn’t actually farfetched since my high school was one of the best in the state for that) once he found out where I was going (thanks to my dumb self putting it in my bio).

I thought that us meeting was a sheer coincidence, and that we fell in love naturally- a clasic sort of highschool sweethearts. But no. Lee had orchestrated it all.

I took my daughter with me to stay with my mom and stepdad, while Lee agreed to stay home and let me think. I spoke to my mom, as well as MIL and FIL. Lee’s parents are not happy with him in all honesty, and MIL is especially mad because of client confidentiality.

My mom gave me some good advice, that being that I should reflect on it Lee had displayed any other redflag behaviors. I can honestly say that no, he hadn’t, but since I know I’m biased I asked my friends and those close to me if they noticed anything.

So far, everything else about Lee seems to check out. I’ve never felt endangered by him, even when I told him I needed some distance for a few days.

I want to make this marriage work Reddit, but is this something that therapy can fix?

Hi this is really late for a reply, I’m sorry about that, I wasn’t ready to acknowledge it for a long time.

Lee told me that he didn’t mean anything by it and wanted to just have a keepsake collection of some memorable moments we shared. But he did acknowledge that he knew it was wrong and apologized, and he promised me he’d get rid of the pictures by burning them.

More comments before 2nd update:

festiq writes:

OK, it's weird. It's definitely creepy. Dude stalked her, he keeps a secret stash of mementos that he knows would be entirely socially unacceptable. But he did react calmly, in her story, to her needing space.

So is it possible that he's just a weird dude whose style of love is deep obsession? Is it possible that there are obsessive stalkers out there that aren't dangerous, it's just we only hear about that kind of behavior when it's attached to a crime?

Update 2:

Lee and I have since been going to couple’s counseling, and he’s going to individual therapy. After the whole drama that happened a few months ago, he sort of had a “come to Christ moment” where he realized that the way he had been obsessing over the idea of me wasn’t the same as a healthy love.

We spent a few weeks apart so he could work on himself and he turned over his devices passwords and accounts to me so that I could go through and calm my worries because I was really anxious about the explicit photos

Since then though we’re back in our house and with our baby girl, and our marriage is back on track and better for it