My partner reminded me recently to resign our lease for the upcoming year, to avoid a fee. Although I requested the renewal, I forgot to sign the lease that was emailed to us while we were on vacation.
While we were quietly sitting together with my mom, he suddenly slapped the couch and ?maybe cursed. While he’s capable of yelling, this wasn’t very loud, it was just sudden and shifted the energy. My mom was startled- she is sensitive, and my dad’s reactions are less sudden. I was startled too and asked what was wrong. When he said we got charged $300, I immediately became stressed and went into damage control mode. I emailed the office and worried (they ultimately waived the fee). I think by the end of the conversation I said I would cover it entirely if I have to.
What escalated is that my mother, who has liked him for years, did not like his reaction- she said it almost gave her a heart attack, commented about his behavior, immediately tried to comfort and defend m saying that $300 is not that much (we’re aware that it is a lot of course). We resolved to wait on the leasing office’s response.
However, later, I brought up to my partner that it would’ve been nice for him to say something after his reaction, just a simple “sorry for startling you” to my mom to ease the situation. Overall he is of the mindset that his reaction was normal so there’s objectively nothing to apologize for, and that she actually attacked him. I’m of a mindset that if we make people feel a certain way it’s not wrong to acknowledge it as he said nothing after her statements. This resulted in me and him arguing, with his point being that I am using his justified reaction to deflect blame about the fee, and that I’m unable to acknowledge that SHE overreacted. For context, he is a very black-and- white kind of person, and generally does not do well with comforting or giving an inch when he sees his reactions are justified or that he is objectively right, which often leads to conflict. At most he’ll say to me “I will admit I got angry but you have 0 ability to admit any fault and your actions are the trigger”. He worries sometimes about his ability to bite his tongue and has gotten into verbal altercations with female friends before, so I do admit I’m biased and hypersensitive to anything that he does.
In this case, any time he’s pointed out the fee is my fault, I haven’t denied that and when he pointed out I hadn’t verbatim apologized I did. Overall he thinks I lacked accountability and she had an infantile response. AITA because I made a mistake, and I wouldn’t just let him have a frustrated reaction without apologizing for it?
Update: Actual fee was like $337. If you’re reading the other post, this vacation coincided partially with a conference which covered my lodging, and since we stayed for vacation we split their expenses with our own personal funds. No MIL freeloading. Should not have used the word “let”, he can obviously have his emotions and freedom.
Sincerely thank you for all of your thoughts. I clearly misjudged his reaction and I should have only focused on how I messed up in this situation.