*Why* is my first instinct manipulation?

Example: I called my boyfriend while he was pulling in to hang with a friend of his. We chatted for a couple minutes, there was something I wanted to talk to him about and I told him we could talk after he was done so I didn’t interrupt his hangout. About 4 hours later and not having heard from him, I was feeling disappointed and kinda sad I hadn’t heard from him so I sent a clipped goodnight. He immediately called and apologized for not calling, but I could hear his friend in the background so I just said it’s fine and we hung up. He texted me immediately afterwards to apologize again and I just played it off. He seemed happy with it and we left it at that. After that, I started thinking of what I should have done or could do to inflict discomfort in subtle ways I know would bother him. Should have ignored the text, could tell him the next day I was “disappointed but not surprised,” etc.

Here’s the thing: I know he usually forgets about time when he’s having fun, that’s not new. It was only 4 hours and his hangout usually run long, another given. And more than all that, it wasn’t even an urgent thing I wanted to talk to him about. It was important to me, but absolutely nothing that couldn’t have waited.

I just feel icky that my first instincts are to act like that, to be over-sensitive and lash out in small ways I know hurt people. It’s happened before, but I really try to keep a lid on it these days. It’s only with people I feel close to and it’s been damaging to relationships in the past. I have some ideas of where it originates, but there’s a lot of pieces I don’t know exactly how to put together. More than that, I want to try and root it out so any advice you may have on how to do that would be much appreciated. I don’t want to ruin the best relationship I’ve had by being this, but I’m afraid I’ll lash out one day and won’t be able to fix it.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask and I will answer as best I can. And thank you in advance for your advice.