My partner (31M) of 2 years and I (31F) had a nice short movie series night at the cinema. We were discussing the movies we just watched, and I was expressing how I felt about one of them by saying something like:
“We as humans wait until it’s too late. We wait until retirement to do things and feel the joys, etc., etc. In a way, humans are tragic.”
His response was something along the lines of:
“Is it we, or is it just you? You can’t generalise, you can only speak from your experience.”
He got really bogged down in the wording. I got annoyed because I didn’t feel heard — it felt like an English literature class with that one obnoxious kid who nitpicks semantics.
I told him my feelings and reflections aren’t facts, I’m just expressing how the movie made me feel. He kept saying, “Language matters,” and couldn’t engage beyond disagreeing with my phrasing. He said he doesn’t like when people use the “passive voice” and advocates for “active voice.”
But I was just sharing feelings, and I want to share them in a way that feels authentic to me. I don’t care what “we/I” supposedly says about me. I wanted him to engage with the emotion, not the semantics.
I was visibly annoyed. As I tried to explain myself, he just repeated himself. At some point he said:
“I come from an academic family. This is how we ask questions.”
I got super mad because it felt like he was implying he was above banal conversations about whether I liked the movie. Like… excuse me, Mr Academic.
I told him it was a rude thing to say. He disagreed and said he was just expressing his upbringing and never mentioned my family or any comparison. I said it was implied. He said I was reading malicious intent.
I told him that for a while I’ve felt like he thinks he’s better than me due to other comments he’s made. He said that’s wrong, that he values me and my accomplishments, and thinks the world of me — which soothed me, but I’m dubious about why he can’t see how that comment landed.
Any other context, fine. But bringing up “academic rigour” here felt weird and condescending. I believe he didn’t mean to make me feel less than, but it worries me that he can’t see why it was weird.
How do I address my frustration now that the incident has passed? Do I bring it up again? We talked about it, but nothing really got resolved, we just moved on. I’m still annoyed.
TL;DR:
I shared deep feelings about a movie (“We as humans are tragic, we wait until it’s too late…”). My partner derailed everything by nitpicking my wording (“Is it ‘we’ or just ‘you’? Language matters!”). I felt unheard, I wanted emotional connection, not a grammar lecture. When I pushed back, he said: “I come from an academic family, this is how we ask questions.” I found that condescending and implying superiority. He says I’m reading too much into it. I’m still annoyed and worried he doesn’t see how patronising that sounded.
29 comments
> “Is it we, or is it just you? You can’t generalise, you can only speak from your experience.”
For someone from an academic family, this is remarkably stupid position to take. We generalized all the fucking time.
I’ve spent a lot of time in academia, and even in those circles this guy sounds like a pedantic jackass.
I think it’s totally fine to keep bringing it up, but I’m not sure I have any magic words that will change this tendency. Some people are just like that; they tend not to be too popular.
[removed]
Wow, he sounds insufferable. Is he always this pedantic? Does he often make you feel like he thinks he’s better than you? Whenever he does, I’d bring it up right away. (And I’d do it with “I” language, not “you” — not “you are condescending” but rather “I feel like you look down on me when you say things like…”.)
He sounds insufferable and you sound fed up with him. What kind of partner can’t discuss a movie without picking a fight?
Condescension is literally one of the most toxic things to a relationship. It’s unlikely that you’ll be able to fix this, because it sounds like your partner DOES think he’s smarter than you.
Personally, I’d break up.
Former academic here married to an academic and from an academic family and with a ton of academic friends. The people in academia who act like this are hated by other academics.
“with your academic background, you lacked the intelligence necessary to comprehend what I mean? You need me to spell it out for you?”
Academic background can easily be used as a smokescreen to behave in all sorts of terrible ways from condescending and derogatory to manipulative and abusive.
He knows damn well what he is doing and is arrogantly confident he can argue semantically in bad faith to get the result he wants. He’s an asshole.
He’s a pedant and annoying at that. He does it to feel superior, rather than engaging in the spirit of the conversation/discussion. If he wants to do that, fine. But it puts an immediate dampener on the intention of your exchange, and makes the whole exercise impossible, irritating, and entirely fruitless. What is even the point if he wants to play that way?
Huge red flag IMO. I had an ex that would attack the semantics of everything I said. It gets old fast. Break up with him and find someone that will actually respect you
Watch Rationality Rules on yt, especially his videos on Jordan Peterson. There’s a lot of parallels with your fella.
He discusses and flags the debate tools used by Peterson, Kirk and people like that and explains them all in very clear language and how to push back against them.
I think it’ll be useful to you.
Is he even an “academic” himself? His wording suggests that he is not.
Edit: girllll, your post history is telling. This guy has been an obnoxious nitpicker for months. You don’t have to live like this. He isn’t going to change when he doesn’t acknowledge the problem.
Tell him his arguments aren’t strong enough and that he is a pseudointellectual because he focuses more on structural procedural arguments rather than emotional/true/personally experienced facts and the true mark of an intellectual is mental sparring based on ideas disparate to ones own fundamental understanding. That shows mental agility, which he is clearly lacking. See what he says.
lol what you said seems totally normal and intelligent, sounds like he was just being a nit pick and decided to dig his heels in. if he does that a lot and seriously can’t understand or even try to understand your position at all, that is a pretty decent issue. cause it sounds like he wasn’t even trying to understand what you were actualy saying but was just correcting u on principle which is weird
What do you know, I have Academic Ick.
He sounds insufferable. Heck, just leave this comment thread open for him…
My wife’s family are all what would be considered academically inclined (her father has an IQ of 165 and went to Harvard and Harvard med, four of five kids went to either Harvard or Yale, all the kids went to elite private schools) and none of them have ever spoken like that.
He sounds like a pretentious ass and it has nothing to do with coming from an academic family.
Have you met the rest of his family? Do they speak to you like this?
Not only is the argument pedantic and beyond the point but why can’t he manage to be polite? He sounds insufferable picking fights that don’t matter for the sake of it. He sounds like all the most annoying people you come across online.
Oh, I bet he’s a hoot at parties!
I come from a family of obnoxious academics. My Ph.D. makes mine the 6th generation on my dad’s side to have a doctoral degree.
This dude is hilariously full of shit, and it sounds like he’s “negging” you, or deeply insecure. I’m leaning towards the former.
Also, there’s a guy out there who will be so into you he will happily listen to you drone on and on about something he cares nothing about just because he wants to see your eyes light up. Drop this dork and go find him!
Wild how someone from an academic family has never once read philosophy.
For someone who got super caught up in semantics at the start of the conversation, he seemed super clueless about how his own words landed at the end.
He sounds very draining. Maybe not always I don’t know him, but definitely in this conversation.
Sure, language matters, but generalizations are part of communication and regularly used in conversation. You were discussing a broad topic and used a generalization appropriately. Anyone with a shred of common sense would have understood the point you were making.
Your BF sounds like he’s got a weird superiority complex and needs to constantly correct others to maintain it. That’s annoying af.
I think others have covered the condescending behavior pretty well. I think the other thing to consider is THIS is what a future argument is going to look like. He’s out to win period. How people argue is soooooo important to compatibility in a couple.
>“I come from an academic family, this is how we ask questions.”
If someone ever said this to me, I would be unable to resist saying
“The reason your family asks questions like this is NOT because they are academics. It’s because they have bad manners.”
Depending on how annoyed I was, I might also say
“Lots of people have overcome the challenges inflicted on them by substandard parenting. I encourage you to make the attempt.”
His response comes across like he’s threatened by you being more intelligent and better at critical/analytical thinking than him, so he’s trying to take you down a peg.
I found him wholly insufferable right off the bat. Holy hell.
Can you hear my eyes rolling? He doesn’t sound well rounded as a person. He sounds like a pedantic know-it-all. Movies and literature are just as much about feelings as anything else. He sounds like a robot with no soul. Good luck with that.
I would just like to say that “People do this” and “we do this” is still active voice…it’s just a different noun.
Your boyfriend is an exhausting pretentious human and also wrong 🙄
Aside from what everyone else has shared, I don’t think your boyfriend actually understands active and passive voice…
“We as humans wait until it’s too late. We wait until retirement to do things and feel the joys, etc., etc. In a way, humans are tragic.”
This passage only contains the active voice.
In any case, I’m a PhD, and I also think this behaviour is obnoxious as hell.