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This is kind of convoluted, but I will explain as best as I can. My boyfriend and I went camping this summer during an air quality advisory. At first it wasn’t bad, but as the first day went on, the sky turned gray and everything smelled like smoke. (The fires were far away so we were not worried about being caught in them.)
I have a health condition that can be triggered by bad air, so I told him I had to leave. I suggested driving to a nearby hotel, and if the air was better in the morning, we could come back to the campsite. (For what it’s worth, we had come in my car, so I wasn’t asking to borrow his.) I even clarified that I would pay for the hotel. He didn’t want to leave and got frustrated with me for suggesting it, and eventually things escalated into a fight. He accused me of making excuses and exaggerating my health problems, and suggested the truth was that I just didn’t want to be with him. Finally I felt myself starting to feel sick and I told him that I had to leave for my own safety, with or without him. I said I was going to the hotel and I’d rather he come with me, but if he didn’t want to, I couldn’t force him. He refused to budge so I went to the hotel by myself and came back the next morning to pick him up.
Ever since then, he’s had a grudge against me for “abandoning” him in the smoky air. He said I didn’t leave him an escape route and he would have been screwed if it got worse, that I was prioritizing myself over him, and if I’d thought it was actually dangerous then I shouldn’t have left him there. I said it was my car so it should have been my choice. It has been a sore spot between us and now I am starting to doubt myself. Was I wrong for leaving?
You were right to leave. I’m completely unconcerned about whose car you took; that’s irrelevant. If one member of a couple is having a health problem, then both members of the couple should prioritize getting them to safety as soon as possible, by whatever means. The same applies to a friendship, of course. It even applies to strangers. If I were at a campground or on a trail, and a random person needed medical care, I would stop what I was doing and try to assist however I could, up to and including helping them evacuate to a safer location. The idea of making that decision based on who owns which car seems ludicrous to me.
What even is the point of being in a couple—or a friendship—if one member is too self-absorbed to even pretend to care about their partner’s health? In this situation, your solution wasn’t even inconvenient: you offered to sleep in a hotel on your own, or to bring your boyfriend with you, which are both extremely reasonable options.
I’m equally baffled by his response in the moment. Why would you be faking your health condition? You don’t even need to have health problems for your actions to make sense. A simple “Hey, this smoke is stinky and unhealthy, I’d rather sleep indoors tonight,” is reason enough. Smoke is gross. We have air quality alerts for a reason. It’s particularly reasonable to want to stay inside when that’s literally what public health officials are recommending.
He must have figured that you didn’t have it in you to actually leave—that you were bluffing, and if he was forceful enough, he could convince you to stay at the campsite with him. It’s the only way his abandonment narrative makes any sense at all, because it sounds like you were communicating clearly. If this is the case—if he figured you didn’t have the spine to leave without him, and felt angry and betrayed when you did—then it reveals an even deeper problem, one in which he feels best about your relationship when you’re ignoring your own needs and catering to his alone.
Try to think back on your relationship: are there any other times when he’s displayed this kind of forcefulness, desire for control, or irritation when you make your own decisions? I’m not going to say these things are always a pattern—I guess it’s possible that someone could have one really bad day—but this situation is certainly a massive red flag, made even more glaring by the fact that he’s doubled down after the fact. Is this really the guy you want to go camping with for the rest of your life? Share a home with? Make life decisions with? Do you even trust that he’d let you contribute to life decisions? If not, it’s better to break up ASAP than to let time pass and get even more embroiled. In fact, you could even dump him the easy way. Pull up your car, roll down the window, and let him know that you’re building your own life and he’s welcome to get in. He won’t, of course—and so off you’ll drive, leaving him in a cloud of exhaust.