Was I the arsehole?

[passionfruit7]

Last night me and my boyfriend went to an event. Whilst there, I found out some awful family news. I walked over to my boyfriend, who was sat at a table chatting, and asked him to come inside quickly. He simply said “I’m chatting” so I just said oh ok and walked away.
I told him later on and he said “I’m really sorry, I didn’t know it was serious”. I told him he could have asked, or said “are you ok” or even “in a minute”. I said his stance was rude. He apologised for this and he comforted me very much after the news.

Later on, we crash at our friends house after the event. We’re on an airbed in the front room. Their dog is in there snoring REALLY loud. After the night I had I just wanted to sleep and I became pretty distressed.
At first boyfriend comforted me and said “just try and sleep” and cuddled me, but after a few times of me commenting on how I couldn’t sleep, he said:

• “what’s complaining going to do”
• ”there’s nothing I can do” “what am I supposed to do” (taking it personally)
• ”the only thing keeping me up is you, I can sleep through it”
• “there’s nothing we can do so I’m just getting on with it and making the best of it”
• i then said after the night I had, I just wanted comfort and he said I’m using that to weaponise him

i still feel really angry. Who is the arsehole here?

Sounds a but needy.

That was my thought as well. I don’t think you’re an arsehole OP but you do seem possibly a bit needy. Only going off these two incidents though and they might not be representative of how you usually are. We all have bad days.

YABU I echo what most posters have put especially @WunWun.

You sound really quite dramatic/needy, I hope you aren't going to give your boyfriend a hard time about this today.

Of course OP was needy, that's the point, surely, after receiving horrible news?

OP needed her partner to be more supportive and felt he wasn't. I don't think OP was the arsehole.

@ThreeLittleDots

Thanks, thought I was going mad for a minute. I get why both were cantankerous, but not the overreaction on this thread to someone wanting some attention overnight. If that were every night, different of course.

So you couldn't sleep so you had to keep him awake, why couldn't a normal discussion not happened the next morning?

Hmmm, I wasn't there but it doesn't sound like he's done anything particularly wrong. You interrupted and asked to speak with him but gave him no indication that it was important. He was a bit off when you asked but apologised later. You've complained about being unable to sleep and having a crap night...presumably he started off with 'l know Hun, come here now, try and get some rest'....then you told him again, then again and again. I can understand his frustration. If you cried as well that would do my head in.
Whatever your bad news was I'm sorry for you but other than listen, what exactly was your bf to do!

OP said he was very supportive and comforted her once he knew.

But she’s mad that he made her wait because he was talking to someone else and he didn’t realise she had received bad news.

I don't think either of you has done anything wrong

If it happened exactly as you have written then first part - yabu - he wasn't to know it was serious . You could have been asking him in to ask when you could leave, or for anything and it's really rude to suddenly stop a conversation like that. Even little kids are told not to interrupt unless it's important then they must say that it's important.

Second part. I don't get why you didn't go home if your news was that bad. You decided to stay. So I agree. A little comfort fine but your main gripe is about the dog snoring in which case I agree there's nothing he could do and he was trying his best to sleep himself. Why would you want him to loose out on sleep too!

Arsehole is a strong word. But I don't think the boyfriend can be blamed. OP didn't communicate the seriousness of the situation

She didn’t want comforting at night though, she said that she wanted sleep.
And he said there’s nothing he can do about it.

I don’t understand what you/she expected him to do.
It wasn’t his home, he couldn’t put the dog out or anything.

I’m afraid it’s you, understandable though if you’ve just had some difficult news. You were expecting him to know exactly what you needed without telling him and it sounds like you were blocking his attempts to support you.

Also, if you can’t sleep, don’t wake someone else up unless it’s urgent. That’s just selfish.

I think you were both unreasonable & also neither of you were unreasonable if you see what I mean. Sounds like you were both a bit tired & it was a difficult situation. Neither of you handled it the best, but neither of you handled it the worst. These things happen. I’d not make a deal of it.

She said he was supportive when he found out the news, she also said he tried to be nice overnight until she kept on.

Yes but she didn’t initially communicate that and he apologised.

@Chippy4me

I never said I expected him to do anything, I said I don't understand the criticism of someone wanting comfort overnight.

Sometimes, people just don't agree on things/situations - there was a time when grown ups used to be able to accept that.

OP asked the boyfriend to come inside quickly and he was rude.

If I interrupted my husband by asking him to come inside quickly, he'd definitely know something was up and not effectively tell me to sod off.

He hasn't done anything wrong.

I'm sorry you got bad news and this is probably clouding your judgement plus lack of sleep.

You said yourself, once you told him the news he was supportive.

You also said when you were initially saying you couldn't sleep he was comforting you.

When you say you just wanted comfort what do you mean? Did you just want to have a chat? Maybe you should of said this instead of talking about how you couldn't sleep - you should of said i still feel very upset/thrown by this news, I cannot switch off etc. i need a chat.

However, not many people are going to be at their best in the middle of the night sleeping on an air bed.

Yabu

I think all is this is on you OP to be honest!

1. You didn't tell him why you needed to speak to him.

1. You were being incredibly annoying and I'd have fucking flipped if you'd kept me awake all bloody night simply because YOU couldn't sleep!! How selfish!

Work on your neediness. It's not attractive!

Op, sadly you’ve taken a crap situation for yourself and now turned it into a martyrdom

yep, you were upset. Fair enough. It was dwelling on your mind, fair enough, sleeping was difficult due to that and other stuff. Fair enough.

at that point you should have got up, taken yourself somewhere else for an hour and distracted yourself deliberately to take your mind to a relaxed state ready for sleep. Ideally this would have been form listening to music, reading a book or watching TV. sometimes, you really can’t make a crappy situation any better in the here and now. And sleep is actually really important to get a sense of perspective and begin to process emotions. Your boyfriend was right in saying there was nothing useful to be done in middle of night, including talking about it. I’m 60 now, and have long since learnt that in these situation and other stressful situations, sleep has to be protected, and that you have to often FORCE yourself to become distracted- almost batting away the thoughts and emotions that are so distressing, until you’re in a better place to mamange them and process them

your boyfriends reaction was that of someone who was tired, irritable and is relatively normal. Nothing worse than being forced to stay awake- you were effectively trying to use him as, at best, your emotional sponge , and at worse, your emotional punchbag. all you’ve resulted in doing is to max him sleep deprived too, which means he’ll be less able to help you process your own emotions the next day.

to put it bluntly, you didn’t behave with emotional maturity. Try to realise others are not responsible for your emotions. They can’t take those emotions away from you. They can’t wave magic wands to make you feel better. Only YOU can do that. That can take a lot of time, depending on what the news was, and that’s fine (read grief pathway stuff if it’s a loss). But please learn the valuable lesson that trying to make someone else responsible for fixing your emotions, or, god forbid, making them responsible for your emotions, is never, ever, actually going to help you.

What was the awful family news?
Can't really judge the rest of it without knowing that.

I don't understand why you didn't insist on him coming inside initially if the news was that bad. You maybe didn't make it clear enough to him that it was very important as you just said "Oh, ok" when he refused to come in.
Impossible to judge really but if he regularly ignores you like that and just brushes you off, maybe he isn't all that great. Or maybe you interrupt his conversations with crap regularly and he's had enough of it? The boy who cried wolf type of thing?

The second part - that sounds like you were very needy and attention seeking. But again, it depends what your news was - if a parent has suddenly died unexpectedly then you are going to be a complete mess and not with it so he should have been more sympathetic (but if it was that then I don't think you would have continued with the event and would have just gone home).
If it really wasn't an absolute worst case scenario you should have just tried to go to sleep - he did try to comfort you after all.

I think both of you are a bit in the wrong over the first issue. He was dismissive, but you didn't communicate very well.

With the second issue I think you're in the wrong... How is stopping him sleeping going to help the situation - there isn't anything he could really do there.

You didn't just want comfort. He offered you comfort straight away. You wanted him to stay awake to listen to you complaining. That's different.