Hi! I recently broke up with someone I was dating, but I'm curious how you would have handled this situation if you were in my shoes and decided to stay

A little background context my ex had been going through a lot of stress in his life, and I was discovering that his stress management skills are 0. I happened to be having kind of an off day myself and I shared that with him, he asked me how I was feeling and I said "I don't know honestly." and he said "You need to speak more kindly to me or this isn't going to work" ???

I guess he misunderstood me and took "I don't know" to be a dismissive comment, but not only did he not apologize for the misunderstanding, he starts unloading all of his stress on me and framing it in a way like I'm the one putting pressure on him... He didn't talk to me for days after that and I didn't know how to handle the situation, I felt like there were too many communication obstacles already so I just politely ended things.

I guess my question is, how do you handle feeling like you deserve an apology and not getting one? And how do you express your emotional needs to a high value man in general? Thanks!!