My digital past

Normally photographs or written diaries would give clues to a person's past. In my case, it's different. Yes there are photographs though these get fewer the further back you go. In my case, it's a box packed full of floppy disks and tapes. I'd retrieved it from the loft yesterday curious to know what was in it. I fished out all the floppy disks, some of them covered in dust and with cryptic labels only I knew the meaning of sometime long ago. I began to read some of them and was surprised to find things such as backups of my e-mail, photographs of pen friends, early electronic diaries and letters - many of which were to and from my early 'electronic lovers'. It was actually quite a shock to find that I had committed so much of my early adult life to digital media. The majority of the disks date back to 1995. I even found a great many projects and documents I had created whilst with my first proper employer. It's all useless today, but interesting nevertheless.
My dilemma now is what to do with them all. My wife knows of their existence but has no idea of what they hold, or the faintest clue of how to read them. Would I be worried about her knowing their contents? Well, yes - the letters would certainly upset her. She gets like that very easily. She'd insist on them being destroyed, of that I have no doubt. For instance, last night the Gadget Show on Channel 5 featured gadgets that could powered by daylight and she got really upset at the fact that I was getting excited over a solar powered camcorder. 'You don't get that excited over me', was her retort. 'You're not portable and solar powered', I replied. We sat in silence for some time after. I really don't want to get rid of any of it but I find myself feeling guilty at keeping this digital cache secret. It's difficult to explain how important it really is to me. It contains so much of who I once was and destroying it would be like destroying a part of me. It is true that back in the early to mid 90's, I did have a life different to my wife's. She is keen to tell me that hers was a life of the outdoors, picking vegetables in the fields and enjoying what nature had to offer. Mine on the other hand was one consumed by TV, electronics and computers. I know I spent most of my time in front of my computer - far more than I do now. I had begun to rely on it for most things - including company - which I know is wrong. Back then though, the Internet was relatively young and it was an exciting time. I will always justify that period in my life as being an important factor in my IT career. Admittedly that's now behind me but I earned good money and lived a good lifestyle as a result.
At the heart of it all was my obsession with collecting. I tried to collect everything I could once, so much in fact that there was a real danger of me falling through my bedroom floor. Much of it is now gone and I have a small den at home which I'm allowed to retreat to occasionally. I was very keen back then to collect what I did and I backed-up as much as I possibly could. The media of the day was tape and floppy disk - each limited in the amount of data they could hold. The tapes I will have a problem reading. They are first generation DAT tapes and I don't currently have a working drive. In addition, I've no idea what format I used to back up the data. A project for another day I think - I've plenty to look at on the floppy disks.
So, do I keep them or destroy them? They have no value to anyone except me. I doubt even if my son would be interested in years to come. He'll have his own life to worry about without wondering what his Dad did way back in 1995. Should I really get rid of them all simply to appease my wife or am I right to want to hang on to my digital past...?