I feel like I [29/f] am losing my mind when he [33/m] accuses me of being "hostile" and "raising my voice" when I feel I am doing neither. Help?

Hi Reddit. Together 3 years and just moved across the country, which has seemed to raise tensions considerably.

The problem at hand is that my boyfriend claims that I'm being "hostile" and "raising my voice" when I am talking in what I feel is a perfectly calm manner. Ironically, this actually DOES make me made enough that I DO become hostile and raise my voice, but maybe I'm somehow not understanding what he's interpreting.

Here's an example from a few minutes ago. We had a bit of a conflict earlier because I was sad that he no longer wanted to share a workspace with me (we both work from home) and instead have his own, separate space. So things were already a bit off/tense, though we were talking as normal. He had bought stuff to make a special dinner, and he said "this will be kind of an interactive process, are you sure you want to do it?" and I said "yeah, why wouldn't we do it?"

He stopped what he was doing, glared at me, and said "let's PLEASE try to get this off to a good start." I asked what I had done that indicated that I was not trying to get off to a good start. He then said "you're being hostile-- your body language is hostile (I was standing with my arms crossed), your tone is hostile, and asking the question 'why wouldn't we do it?' is hostile." I said that asking "why wouldn't we do it?" wasn't hostile, but was a genuine question. He said no, that it WAS hostile, and that I should go read the definition of hostile. I said I didn't feel that I was being hostile. He then said I was creating a conflict out of nothing, and that an example of me NOT being hostile would be for me to say "yeah sure, that sounds good!" I argued back that I absolutely was not being hostile and I hated when he used that word, at which point he flung up his hands and said "whatever, I'm not doing this, I'm not cooking anything, I'm just going to do my own thing the rest of the night."

So I followed him and sat down next to him and said "Boyfriend's name, I have not been being hostile. I am not attacking you, or insulting you, or raising my voice." He then said, "you're raising your voice right now" (and this is my own experience, but I was trying with all my might to speak in the absolute calmest tone possible, so I don't see how I could've raised my voice at all). I said, "I actually haven't raised my voice." And finally I just left the conversation.

I fucking hate when this happens. He sometimes makes me feel like I'm insane, or being aggressive, when I feel like I'm just being normal. Am I completely off base here? Did I seem "hostile" in this interaction? How can we fix this? any advice is GREATLY appreciated. thank you!

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TL;DR: boyfriend claims I'm being hostile and raising my voice when I feel like I'm just not.

Submitted February 16, 2021 at 05:27PM by Striking_Doughnut883 https://ift.tt/3uf5hav