The process of waking Jess was often met with extreme negativity, including insults and aggressive behavior from her, which culminated recently when she made a vulgar comment about his hygiene. In response to this final incident, the OP abruptly decided to stop waking her up entirely, leading to Jess oversleeping, losing her job, and then demanding half of his salary. The OP is now questioning whether his sudden cessation of help was the correct approach.
I [26m] have been in a relationship with my girlfriend, Jess [28f] for three years. Jess and I live together.
Jess is not a morning person. This is primarily due to the fact that she’s up until 2 or 3am every day on her phone despite having to wake up at 8am. I’ve tried to get her to start going to bed earlier so she could wake up on time, but she says that would leave her no time to do her own things.
Seeing as she only works until 4pm, this is patently false, but I decided not to press the issue.
Generally, I have to wake Jess up. I wake up at 5:00, run for an hour, get home at 6:00, shower, eat breakfast, and use my computer a bit. I’ll start waking Jess up at around 7:30.
I fully understand it’s ridiculous to have to wake a 28-year-old woman up, but I honestly don’t mind, or at least I wouldn’t mind if it weren’t for the fact that waking Jess up is a nightmare.
I start by gradually turning on the lights at around 7:30, starting with the bedside lamp. Then I begin gently trying to wake her up. If she gets up around this time, she’ll go to the bathroom, and then I’ll go back to the room to find her asleep again.
The worst part about waking her up is she’s so ornery in the morning. She’ll use expletives directed at me, insult me, and then later when I bring up her words, she’ll just say “I was sleepy and out of it.
What do you want me to do?”
Well, last Friday she pushed things a bit too far. I was waking Jess up as usual, and when she walked past me to go to the bathroom, she made this exaggerated dry-heaving sound at me.
Then she said, “You fucking smell. Take a shower.” I had already taken a shower and always keep good hygiene.
That evening I told her that our deal with me waking her up every day was done. I was done with her tantrums, done with her insults, and done with her frankly stupid facial expressions with how out of it she was.
I told her that I’m not moving a finger to make sure she gets up for work on time. She was naturally upset about this, but I said she could wake herself up.
Today was Monday, and lo and behold, she overslept and was over an hour late. Since she had already been written up twice during her probationary period for her job, this was an automatic firing.
Around noon she called me incoherently yelling about how I got her fired. I had to hang up on her to get back to work. When I got home, she immediately started shrieking at me more, and then demanded half my salary until she found a better job.
I feel like making her go cold turkey on waking up might have been too sudden, and apparently she really liked the job she had. Should I have at least tried to wake her up?
Conclusion
The central conflict lies between the OP’s need to enforce personal boundaries against mistreatment and the immediate, severe consequences that resulted from his sudden withdrawal of support. While the OP has a right to end involvement in a situation that involves verbal abuse, his method caused his partner significant professional harm.
The reader must consider whether the OP was justified in prioritizing his own well-being and refusing to enable abusive morning behavior, or if he had a relational responsibility to ease out of the waking routine, perhaps by giving a firm warning about the consequences of losing the job. Should the OP have given a progressive warning about ending the waking routine, or was the pattern of verbal abuse sufficient grounds for immediate change?
Here’s how people reacted:
She’s an adult. She needs to start acting like it. She’s refusing to take blame here and that’s a her problem. She either needs to fix it or get fked.
If you stay it will only get worse, more expensive, and more expensive. Be at peace ✌️
If the princess can’t handle morning shifts, she needs to find an afternoon job and hopefully a new BF soon. Grow up.
You want me waking you up??? Ok here’s a nice glass of ice water all over you, every day.
I feel like this is grounds for breaking up. she’s a fucking adult, you’re dating a nasty teenager.