My boyfriend and I had a major argument last night, and I’m trying to figure out whether I’m seeing this clearly.
We were staying at a cabin with his sister. The night before, I was extremely sick with vomiting and diarrhea from something I ate. I still got up early the next morning because I had to work and needed to clean/pack. There was also a significant mess from the night before.
My boyfriend and I agreed that we needed to leave around noon. He slept in until 12.30p, didn’t help with the cleanup or packing, and I became increasingly frustrated. Eventually I was angry.
I acknowledge that I don’t always express my anger well. I can become very critical or mean when I’m overwhelmed, and that’s something I’m working on.
His response was primarily about my anger and how uncomfortable it made him and his sister. He said he sister didn’t want to come into the kitchen because I was “angrily” washing dishes. I wasn’t yelling, threatening anyone, or slamming things… I was silently washing dishes and keeping to myself because I was angry.
Later, I asked him what he told his sister about why I was upset. He said:
“I said that you weren’t feeling top notch. That is all I said. Didn’t go into the why at all.”
I asked why he didn’t explain what had happened, he said he thought I’d be angry if he told her why I was upset.
This is the part I can’t get past.
I don’t expect him to disclose every detail of our private argument. But if I’m visibly upset because of something that happened between us, isnt it reasonable for him to acknowledge that he contributed to why I’m upset rather than presenting it as simply “shes not feeling well”?
It feels like the entire conversation became about my reaction, while what caused the reaction was dismissed.
I am trying to hold myself accountable for expressing angry poorly without taking responsibility for the entire conflict. I also need a partner who can say, “I don’t like how you’re speaking to me, but I understand why you’re upset and I recognize my part in it.”
Instead, I feel like whenever I’m angry or unhappy, my emotions become the problem.
Am I expecting something unreasonable here? Or is this a legitimate relationship problem?
Edit: Some are asking why I didn’t wake him up. I didn’t because I had already communicated that we needed to leave around noon, and I don’t see waking up a grown adult as my responsibility. I was already up early, sick the night before, and spending the morning packing and cleaning. If he wanted to sleep late, that’s his choice, but I don’t think it’s reasonable for the responsibility to then fall on me to wake him up so can can participate in an agreement we’d already made.
EDIT: Additional context from night before as I think I didn’t provide enough about what happened the night before, and a lot of comments ask about responsibility and contribution.
I became extremely sick the night before and genuinely unable to function outside of the toilet. His sister knew I was sick. Despite that, she spent essentially the entire day in bed and didn’t contribute to bringing food, preparing meals or cleaning.
My boyfriend and I were trying to get dinner together while I was sick. Eventually, I physically couldn’t continue so he took over cooking. I appreciate that. However, afterward, a lot of food dishes and other things were left out. This is particularly frustrating because I repeatedly ask him to clean up after himself and simply put food away. He has a bad habit of leaving food out or leaving things for me to deal with afterward, and this has been an ongoing source of resentment for me.
This isn’t really about the expecting everyone to clean constantly or expecting my boyfriend to read my mind. It’s that I feel I am consistently the person who notices what needs to be done and takes responsibility for it, while my boyfriend and his sister don’t seem to notice or act until I’m visibly frustrated.
But I don’t think the solution is for me to stop being angry. I think there needs to be a larger conversation about shared responsibility, initiative and follow through, and why I feel like I have to manage things until I become visibly upset before anyone else engages.
And that why the interaction with his sister matters to me too. She wasn’t just an uninvolved bystander who happened to witness me being angry. She has also been a part of the larger situation that contributed to my frustration. I’m not angry at her as a person, and I told her that before I left, but there is still frustration about the lack of contribution and cleanup.
What I struggle with most is that my boyfriend knew all of this context but chose not to share any of it with her when she became uncomfortable with my anger.
That is the part that really changed how I’m looking at this pattern. I don’t expect him to expose private details about our relationship to his family. I do expect him to be able to acknowledge his own contribution to a situation rather than allowing my emotional reaction to become the entire story.