Dating : Boyfriend (18m) yelled at me (18f) a few days ago, and I haven’t been able to move on from it

Dating : Boyfriend (18m) yelled at me (18f) a few days ago, and I haven’t been able to move on from it

Alrighty so my boyfriend and I have been dating for around 9 months, and our relationship is generally happy and healthy. We fight sometimes, of course, as everyone in a relationship does, and we fought a couple of days ago. It’s not the worst fight we’ve had, but maybe « top 3 » I guess.

Basically, we’d planned a fun Saturday together where drive out to a few different fun department stores to buy our dads some stuff for father’s day, and then come back to my house to eat some of our favourite food and watch a movie he’s been wanting to show me for forever. However, when he came over to my house, immediately I saw that he was in, not necessarily a « bad » mood, but just a kinda unhappy, disgruntled one. He starting sad-complaining about how it was raining and how his rain poncho had ripped a bit on his way over and how he was tired, etc. I kinda took his face in my hands and said something along the lines of « it’s okay! we’ll still have a fun day and we’re gonna make the best of it, right? » and he responded, « yes ».

So, we drove to our first store and I started looking around for stuff to buy, and I guess I was kind of focussed on shopping for something because apparently I was giving one worded responses every time he talked to me (I didn’t notice this, and it was not intentional). Suddenly he was walking in different areas of the store than me and not talking to me when I tried to ask something. Finally I asked, « are you okay? what’s wrong? did I do something », and he refused to respond. I got pretty upset at this point because we’ve had many conversations about the fact that if one of us is upset at the other, and we directly ask them to want to work it out, you should be responding, not just ignoring them completely. So, I got mad, but I was really trying to still not let my temper get the best of me, and just carried on, after asking him a few times if he wanted to talk about whatever was bothering him (no response).

A few hours pass, and we’re okay at this point, but still haven’t talked about what happened. So, when we were maybe 10 minutes from my house, I asked him if he wanted to talk about what happened. He said that he felt ignored and that his feelings were being ignored the « first time ». He was referring to when he came to my house and it had felt like what I said (« it’s okay! we’ll still have a fun day and we’re gonna make the best of it, right? ») was brushing off what he was feeling upset about, but he was only referring to this incident as « the first time », so I thought he was talking about when he was ignoring me in the store. So I said, « then why didn’t you tell me that instead of ignoring me? did you want to make me feel ignored as well? ». I don’t remember super clearly what happened after this but I repeated the question after he kinda dodged it, and then he yelled at me about how he « knew it was stupid to do that and why did I have to keep bringing it up » and some other things. I was only asking « then why didn’t you tell me that instead of ignoring me? » twice because he wasn’t answering me, and I was confused. This was not said aggressively, or patronisingly, it was genuinely me trying to talk him through that. Anyways, it ended with me basically sobbing all the way home while driving, and him just sitting there.

The difference between me and him, is that when I get mad and he starts crying, my heart breaks and all my anger melts away and I feel so bad and hug him and try to figure it out without anger in the mix. He did not do that. It feels like when he’s angry, he shuts off or ignores me or « runs away » (not literally), and when I’m angry all I can think about is trying to solve the stupid problem *with* him, and trying to comfort him when I’ve said something idiotic in my anger.

We got home I took us to my room and just laid on my bed crying while he sat in a couch chair. I didn’t tell him to go away, even though he asked if that’s what I wanted right then, because I don’t like being able to just « run away » when there’s a problem, and I felt like having him leave would extend the bad feelings for longer and just make it worse and I would regret having to reach out over text or something later in the night.

He finally told me what he meant by the « firs time », and I apologised and explained that I didn’t mean to make him feel like I was ignoring his feelings. He said he was sorry for raising his voice and he didn’t want to hurt me like that. After a while, we carried on with the rest of our night.

I admitted the next day when he asked what was wrong that I was still upset about the day before, and I don’t know if I should let him know still that I’m still upset about what happened or not because I don’t know if there’s anything he can do.

I felt yelled at and then unloved (through his anger, and this isn’t the first time I’ve felt that when he’s angry at me) when he didn’t try to make it better until he was bored with sitting in his chair. Or maybe he just wanted time to think and didn’t want to push me too much by trying to bother me when I was crying. I don’t know. Is there something different I should be doing? Again, this does not happen often at all, but for some reason this time feels different and I haven’t been able to get over it.