Asking for a friend.

[Yay68]

i have a dear friend who has been dating a man for the past year. They seem happy together after both not having the best past relationships, both 52. Recently whilst having a glass of wine with friend, she opened up and said her now boyfriends last partner accused him of rape.. Obviously I was shocked and saddened to hear this. He was arrested but after being bailed All charges were dropped.
This was 4 years ago. My concern is he still has pics of him and ex on Facebook. Isn't this odd for someone who was accused of such an awful thing but keeps her pics? Whilst I don't think we should erase out past on social media, on this occasion I think he should. My friend asked him to remove pics but he brushed it off and said he doesn't know how to delete and it's no big deal. Am I over reacting by thinking it is??

Why is your friend more bothered by the pics than the rape allegations?

I think it's a problematic situation either way and probably if your friend was sensible, she would run for the hills. If he was in fact arrested for rape, that's a red flag. Prosecuted or not, it would make me uncomfortable. People don't get accused of and arrested for rape when they are totally innocent very often - at the very least, there were some tricky relationship dynamics going on which don't sound very healthy. If he has made this up, then it sounds very much like the 'crazy ex' narrative he's trying to spin - and she's probably not that crazy if he still hangs on to photos of her on social media.

That said, I do think that there are certain types of men who try to 'head off' the truth about them by being really upfront early on about really quite worrisome information as a way of identifying partners who will have poor boundaries and low standards. The ones with healthy boundaries and good self-esteem will run a mile at such a disclosure. The ones who stick around are more likely to be easily manipulated and to be tolerant of their poor behaviour.

Case in point, I have a family member who went on a first date with someone with a serious history of child abuse. He was very open on the first date about his arrest and conviction. I wholeheartedly believe it was an intentional disclosure to see how poor her boundaries are (they're pretty poor!). They're now married and she has lost all her family and most of her lifelong friends because of this guy. A normal healthy person would have been so appalled, they would have gotten up and walked out right there, that's how serious the disclosure was.