Woman Applauded for Walking Out on Boyfriend Over 'Colorful Past' Comments

A woman has attracted praise online after detailing how she walked out on her boyfriend during his birthday party over a remark referencing her "colorful past."

In a Reddit post shared under the handle u/PsychologicalMind407, a user claiming to be a 26-year-old woman detailed how she "didn't say anything" in response to the comments and simply got up and left with the PS5 console she had bought him, which she returned for a full refund.

When it comes to dating and relationships, our past can shape how we are perceived by a potential partner. This was best highlighted in a 2017 study published in The Journal of Sex Research that saw participants hypothetically asked how willing they would be to become romantically involved with a person with a specific number of previous partners.

What they found was that those tested were most willing to be in a relationship with someone who had had one to six prior partners. While having no partners at all was deemed something of a turn-off, researchers also identified a drop-off in appeal among those who had had nine or more partners.

It's a little more complicated than that for the woman posting as u/PsychologicalMind407. According to the post, her "colorful past" centers on the fact she previously dated a man called Jake, followed by another man called Adam.

"I found out a couple months later that Jake and Adam were actually really close friends but I didn't know Jake long enough to meet his friend group, so I had no idea," she wrote.

After discovering this, she broke things off with Adam and took a couple of years off from dating. Then she met her current boyfriend Mike. When she told him about this, he insisted her past "didn't bother him."

Yet, when it came to his recent birthday party, she was stunned to hear one of Mike's friends describing her as a "thot" which is a derogatory term for a woman who has engaged in many casual sexual encounters.

When she confronted Mike over the remarks, he insisted the friend was "just messing" with her and she needed to "take a joke." Yet, when she insisted she was still unhappy at what had been said, her boyfriend told her "everyone knows you were a thot before you met me."

Stunned at what he said, the woman was left further enraged when Mike proceeded to tell her that if he was able to get over her "colorful past" and "thot mentalities" then she should be willing to do the same.

"I didn't say anything," the woman said. "I just got up. Took the PS5 from the gift table and left....I was so hurt that I took the bow off and took it straight back to the store I got it from. They happily refunded it."

Since then she's been inundated with angry messages from Mike and his friends accusing her of being "petty" and telling her she brought it on herself for "making poor choices." The reaction has left her wondering whether she went too far in her response.

Nicole Moore, a relationship expert at Love Works, is not so sure.

"Her boyfriend should have never used a misinterpretation of her dating past as an inside joke with his friends behind her back," Moore told Newsweek. "It's never ok for one member of a couple to badmouth their partner to friends especially if the partner is around said friends a lot. This woman shared her past with her boyfriend, vulnerably, because she thought her boyfriend was a safe space and he violated her trust by sharing the intimate details of her past in a derogatory way with his friends."

Moore said she struggled to see how the relationship could be salvaged given the "lack of trust" and evident "contempt" felt by Mike. "It's clear that the boyfriend judges his girlfriend for her past even though he claims that he sees her 'colorful' past as a positive," she said. "To make fun of your partner with friends implies that on some level, you devalue your partner and don't take them seriously."

Despite this, she felt the woman made a mistake in taking the gift back as in doing so she sunk to her partner's level. "When someone is judging you, making fun or you or viewing you in a negative light, it's so tempting to retaliate to make them see that what they did to you was wrong," she said. "But unfortunately, the retaliation almost always backfires because now it gives your partner a chance to focus on what you did wrong instead of realizing what they did wrong."

Instead, Moore felt the woman would have been better served by pulling the boyfriend aside for an "honest conversation" about what happened. "If she spoke to her boyfriend calmly first, and he refused to see his own wrongdoing, then she could have gone ahead and returned the gift if she really wanted to. At least this way, her behavior wouldn't be seen as reactionary and crazy."

Ultimately, Moore struggles to see how the relationship could be repaired or why the woman would want to in the first place. Many on social media were inclined to agree. "How dare he shame her and invite his friends to take part," one Redditor wrote, with another calling it "a brutal way to find out what someone you've put 4 years into thinks of you."

A third added: "He's not mad that you can't take a joke. He's mad because you took his toy back. And that is all he's mad about."

Newsweek reached out to u/PsychologicalMind407 for comment. We could not verify the details of the case.

Have you noticed any red flags that made you end a relationship? Let us know via life@newsweek.com. We can ask experts for advice, and your story could be featured on Newsweek.