tl;dr- I argued with my SO the night before his major exam, and he didn’t do as well as he could have.
Me [25F] and my SO [26M] are both medical students who are getting ready to apply to residency. We have been dating for 2.5 years. There is a national exam called Step 2 whose score is very important in determining where we end up for medical residency for the next 4 years.
A month leading up to the exam, I tried to make things easy for my partner because I was scheduled to test 1 month after him. I did more of the cooking, cleaning, and work on shared school assignments as we agreed he would take over once he took the exam.
But, the night before his Step 2 exam, I started an argument with him, albeit inadvertently. It started because I was studying and he went up to kiss my head, and I didn’t say anything / came off as annoyed. He went back to his desk to do his thing. After 15-30 min, I went to him and said, “Can you please not interrupt me while I’m studying in the future?”He said that he wouldn’t, and he just did it because he was nervous for his test. Then, I tried to hug him and I may have rolled my eyes. (I didnt think I was but he saw me do so. there have been a few times in the past where he thought I was rolling my eyes and I didn’t think I was.)
He called me out for rolling my eyes and the discussion devolved into him eventually bringing up the fact that I “wasn’t being comforting to him recently,” and I took offense to that because I thought I’d been helping him over the past month. I got triggered and we essentially argued for 1.5 hours from 8 – 9:30pm. In the end, it turns out that he meant that I wasn’t being comforting to him over the past few days when he asked me multiple times if I thought he would do well on the exam (I had been getting annoyed and it came off that way when I spoke to him after he asked several times). I do admit I was stubborn and wouldn’t back down despite him trying to elaborate and clarify multiple times.
It got to the point where he started considering rescheduling his test because it was affecting his mental. He became extremely upset because he said that I was creating a huge argument before his exam and wanted an apology or else he would reschedule the test for next week. I ultimately apologized for arguing, and he then spent 30 min in bed listening to a med podcast, and then slept.
The next day, he woke up at 5:30am and went to take his test. He said that he couldn’t get good sleep because of our argument and that his mind was groggy.
I know that I should have controlled my emotions and not argued the night before his important test day. I apologized in the days after for this, but he said that I sounded cold and begrudging when I did.
After his exam he also made a list of mistakes he thought he made, of which many he claims he could have gotten right if he had just had better sleep or went into the exam with more mental clarity because he was between 2 answer choices. Anyhow, he got his score back today, and it’s mid 240s and he wants to do anesthesia. This score means he is below the national average for the anesthesia specialty. His practice tests scores consistently predicted he would get a 254. The national average for anesthesia is 252.
He has since been extremely emotional and said that I caused his low score, and I should remember how I affected his potential life trajectory. I do not disagree with that- if I didn’t start the argument, he would have gotten better sleep and not as stressed during his exam. I have apologized repeatedly. When he got his score back, he then made some remark sarcastically that he would be fair and get back at me the day before my test by breaking up with me or starting an argument. He later said that he isn’t actually planning to do that.
How do we proceed from here and work past this?