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Background Information: We have been together for 2.5 years. We do not live together, but visit each others apartments around 5 times a week. He is in his early 30s and I am in my mid 20s. We live in Germany

Story:

A few month ago I found a picture of my boyfriend kissing (what I assumed was) his ex girlfriend while looking for some stuff. I did not think much of it, and put it back.

My boyfriend has many pictures hanging in his apartment, most of them are with his friends, a few are with myself.

I suddenly noticed that one picture (not a group picture) had his ex girlfriend on it. It was just her on it. Alone.

When he came home, I asked him if he would mind removing her picture. He said "I can do that".

Fast forward a few month. The picture is still in the frame, I asked him again, because maybe he just forgot.
"Sweety, could you please remove her picture, I really don't like seeing it." He answered: "good you didn't see there are actually two pictures of her, but sure I can remove it"

I was kinda speechless. I know he does not try to be mean, and I know he does not love her anymore. But the picture still hangs there.

Question:
How do I tell my boyfriend how much I want these pictures gone, and that this task is not something he can postpone any longer?

How do I tell my boyfriend how much I want these pictures gone, and
that this task is not something he can postpone any longer?

At this point, after dating for a couple of years, I don't think its unreasonable for you to be a bit more firm in you request.

First, use your own idea of offering to remove them together. This seems like a good group effort approach to try first. It is a non confrontational approach to achieve the desired result.

If that doesn't work, on your next visit, say something like:

"It bothers me to see the pictures of your ex girlfriend, and you don't seem to care about my feelings in this regard. When you visit my place, you don't see a bunch of pictures of my ex boyfriends. If you are that attached to them and won't put them away, perhaps we can go out versus staying here at your place."

What your doing essentially without saying it directly: as long as those pictures are still on display, I won't be staying or visiting your place.

If I read the tea leaves correctly, that may be enough for him to put them away. He may also become a bit agitated that you "making a big deal" out of what he perceives as nothing. Do not concede here. IMO its very disrespectful to you, two plus years into your relationship.

Ultimately, when I was dating I did not keep pictures of my ex girlfriends out for the next person to see. It was part of my past, so those went in the drawer somewhere.

I know this is a bit of a generalization, but you have asked him to remove them already. I would have to ask myself:

"Why are they still there? Am I sure he is still not hung up on her."

You have some interesting conversations ahead of you to get this resolved. But at some point you need to stand your ground.

It seems that he already knows that you dislike the pictures, but for some reason he does not do something about it. We might suppose that he's lazy about the issue, because you say that he procrastinate things... hence, he needs some help.

I usually procrastinate a lot of things, but I have discovered that asking someone for help often solves all my problems. Often I invite a friend to buy clothes, to build a furniture, to visit a new place, to try new food, watch a movie, etc. Things that I know I won't do alone because I'm lazy.

Since he likes to have pictures, gift him some frames, and enjoy a day with him selecting pictures to put in the frames. While doing it offer him your help him to hang them, defining a day to do that.

That day you can say "Since you said you'll remove these pictures, maybe this is a good occasion to replace them with others". Then you (or him) remove the pictures. Finally you ask him to hang the new frames instead.

Optional: To prepare the field for that day, you can invite him one day to your place because you need help to change some decorations. You can ask him his opinion about the different alternatives of decoration. Let him know that you value his views while doing the changes in your place. This set up will make things easier when you plan to make changes in his place.

By doing that you'll do a couple of activities together, you won't need to repeat him that you dislike those pictures, neither escalate a potential conflict nor showing any jealousy.

One option is to give him an unframed picture of you (or of the two of you), the same size and shape as the one that you want to replace. He'd have to do something with the unframed picture soon or risk it getting damaged, and since he knows there's one that size he promised to take down, why not just swap them out now? That way it's not as much "I want to see less of her" as it is "I want to see more of us".

My sister would tell you to go a step farther and just replace the picture when he's busy doing something else and see how long it takes him to notice. That's probably not the best option, though.