AITAH for wanting my boyfriend to sacrifice sleep to calm me down for my exam?
I’ll give some background before getting into this week. I’m 22F and my boyfriend is 22M. We’ve been together a little over 2 years. We were both STEM majors, but he graduated with internship experience while I struggled to find opportunities. He now works as an AI engineer at a great company, and we live together in a nice condo with our 2 cats. Overall, I’m very happy with him.
Career-wise, I’ve struggled a lot. I was diagnosed with ADHD recently and have exam anxiety. I graduated with a math degree and strong GPA, but despite applying everywhere, I still haven’t been able to secure a stable job with only 1 actuarial exam and no industry experience.
Last year my boyfriend got his current job through his fraternity while I was still getting rejected from everything. I started considering switching career paths because I just wantEd something. When I brought that up, he was upset and said he “was looking forward to having a dual income sometime.” He apologized later, but that comment stuck with me because I already feel guilty about him financially supporting us. Even my family comment about it.
This past week I was studying aggressively for my exam, so I couldn’t contribute to chores as much, we ate out more, I was anxious constantly, taking prescribed Adderall daily, and staying up until 4am stressing.
I asked him if we could spend a couple hours together each night around 9 so I could decompress. The first night, shortly after we started hanging out, he asked if he could go play Xbox with his friend Brett for 30 minutes. I wasn’t mad about Xbox itself, but we set a time.
We talked about it and agreed on 2 hours together nightly. The very next night, at the 2-hour mark, he asked again if he could go play Xbox with Brett. That bugged me. I felt like a chore.
Later that week he got extremely stressed about our credit card balances even though I had reorganized the finances and the money was accounted for across different accounts. I ended up spending hours explaining everything to calm him down when I really didn’t have the time.
The next day he asked what I wanted for my birthday. I mentioned a Dyson, and he immediately got stressed because they’re expensive and he already thinks my female budget (250/month) is excessive even though we can afford it.
The night before my exam, I asked him to stay up with me until I fell asleep because I was panicking. He did, but I could tell he was exhausted and unhappy about it. We stayed up until 4am and my exam started at 8am.
Now the exam is over, but today he’s been moping around because he’s tired from staying up late all week and waiting in the parking lot during my 5.5-hour exam. I understand he’s tired, but it’s frustrating because I was the one taking the exam after studying 10 hours a day all week.
I genuinely can’t tell whether I’m being immature or whether my feelings are valid. I constantly feel like a financial burden and I’m just trying to get a job.