Dear Christine,

I don’t want to raise any unnecessary red flags, but the fact that your boyfriend keep badmouthing his ex and calling her a ‘whore’ is concerning. When a person keep talking about someone in their past in a really negative way, that means that whatever happened between them, he has not resolved it. So it’s a possibility that your boyfriend has not moved on from the betrayal from someone he held affection for and that is causing him to be caustic; talking about his ex, calling them a whore, which can’t make you feel any good because you’ve never the person yet here he is talking about someone you don’t know. It’ll also feel like he is implying that since his ex had cheated on him, he should be pity because she was the bad person therefore don’t you dare cheat on him yourself, i. e. don’t be like that ‘whore’. Hence, if you do act similar to like his ex, then you are automatically a ‘whore’, no question ask. But who wants that kind of label on themselves, especially from a beloved?

Of course, he might not have meant that by discussing his ex, but he also could calmly talk about how his ex cheated on him, without the name calling, and that’s why they are now exes. There is never a need to call someone something like ‘whore’ unless you’re still really angry about what happened and desire to paint the other person to make them the bad person and you the good person. And doing so more than once? That sort of thing should be reserve for the therapist’s room, not your current partner whom is now pressured into taking on the torch of ‘never thinking of cheating in the relationship’. But you are his girlfriend, not a professional counselor who might be able to help him understand and move on from his disappointment and pain from the betrayal.

The continuous bombardment of hearing ‘whore’ in the voice of your boyfriend will create an invisible pressure on you to not be a ‘whore’ if you wish for the relationship to work out since that is one of his ‘implied’ condition for never ending your relationship. After all, because his ex is a ‘whore’ (do you know the whole story, or just his side?), keyword ‘is’, the relationship then ended. So that implied that if you wish not to end the relationship, you should never be/act a ‘whore’. Hence you feel responsible for any actions that might make you seem a ‘whore’ or in other words, a very bad person. No pressure, right?

Try not to rationalize this whole thing. You’re obsessing over this because something about it does concern you, you just haven’t figure out the underlying why yet. Take your time, and take time from your boyfriend if you need it. Sometimes, you just need space and breathing room from those close to you to be able to gain an objective perspective on the situation that is making you feel that, for some reason, your action has branded you as a bad person. You might have felt a moment of jealousy on NYE, but that does not mean that you acted on it. Actions are not always prompted by feelings. People do stupid things when drunk.

But the fact that you feel as if you are a ‘whore’, similar to the ex, is concerning and should be looked at. The ex is not in the picture of your relationship, is she? She’s not in contact with your boyfriend, is she? So why should your actions be compared to hers, why compare yourself to her? She is not you and you are not her. But that you feel the need to compare the two of you as if you were the same person or closely related/similar gives the impression that you see her as a bad model to never imitate. Well, understandable since she supposedly cheated on your boyfriend, but to also think yourself as a ‘whore’? That’s concerning and questionable territory.