Context: me (f24) and boyfriend (m34) live together. Have been together 2.5 years.

We are both on A/L atm. Today meant to be a date day. Usually-and this I feel is fairly important-I get woken up 2 hours prior to the time I need to be woken up by his 6 foghorn style alarms, that play every 10 minutes for an hour.

Both of us had stirred this morning, I’d made us tea, and suggested we get out of bed by 10am to get the day going. Boyfriend resting, I thought he was awake. We often both go on our phones in the morning. I got my laptop out and put on the rest of a show I was watching. He gives me headphones, they don’t work. He then flips a switch and is very angry, grabbing my laptop, essentially angry at the noise (I’d turned it down to 3 bars of sound). He tells me to fuck off. I point out that literally yesterday he was watching loud videos which woke me up and I didn’t even say anything. He tells me to shut the fuck up. Shocked, I get up and start packing a bag as I have a camper and my immediate reaction was to get out of the space.

We speak-essentially, he said that if I don’t want a disrespectful reaction, don’t be disrespectful in the first place and that I’m in the wrong for policing his reaction instead of focusing on my action. He said he was asleep, with his head near my laptop (yes, his head was near my laptop, no, I didn’t think he was asleep as we had already spoken in the morning). I essentially say that this is the first time this has happened, we can put a boundary in place so we know not to use gadgets and make noise when one is still resting. I apologised for my actions, and explained that I didn’t realise it was such an issue as I’m used to him using his phone in the morning. I explained that being sworn at and met with anger to something like this is not ok to me and that’s a boundary, in the same way that me making noise in the morning is for him. I explained that if it had been the other way round, I’d have been calmer, and that swearing at each other undermines the fundamental care we should show each other and is not ok for me. I said the way forward now would be for him to apologise too, we both understand these new boundaries going forward, and we go on with the day.

He said my reaction is immature, he’s not ready to apologise and that my reaction says it all. That it’s still early in the morning. (11am) and this is all too intense. I did (immaturely I know) say, ‘are we over then?’ Which I regret.

Ultimately I feel that none of this should have become what it has-he shouldn’t have been so disrespectful to me by swearing, and now I’m being gaslit into thinking that I’m the problem. On the other hand, is his perspective right-if I hadn’t have put my laptop on, we wouldn’t be here?