Men start looking for reasons to hate/intentionally misunderstand you when they realize you’re smarter than they expected?

jupitarianrise · 2022-02-19T05:10:19+00:00

I sent him a selfie (his request).

First he complimented me, then he said “…but I’m probably smarter than you” as if he was trying to reassure himself or something?

It was weird. Every time I posted a picture, he’d be the first to react, but he always insulted me subtly a few seconds later.

One time he said “You’re really smart, I thought you weren’t smart at all” and I replied “Because I’m attractive?” and he was speechless. Then he said “No, bEcAuSe YoU’Re [insert ethnicity]” (the same as his).

His answer was so ridiculous, even he knew it. I just know he was ashamed of himself.

I should’ve blocked him immediately but I was still a Pick me. He was so insecure, it was like he was competing with me all the time. I wasn’t his partner, I was his rival. It was exhausting, dating an envious scrote, always trying to tear me down because I was too good for him.

Recently, I was talking to a guy about something related to my masters degree and he cut me off and immediately started to brag about this one (1) intro class (on my subject of studies) he took a while ago. It wasn’t even relevant.

He said something out of the blue and he really thought he was teaching me something new. It repulsed me. Gave me the ick immediately. 🤢

Equal-Ear2312 · 2022-02-19T05:37:42+00:00

Men start looking for reasons to hate/intentionally misunderstand you when they realize you’re smarter than they expected?

Not necessarily smarter but when a man is misogynistic, he will always hate women.

He hates his mother, his sister, his co-workers, his friends, his girlfriend, his wife and any other woman. He's always lived surrounded by misogyny and he's seen it thriving in his father and brothers and friends and he automatically sees women as second class citizens that stole from men "equality" and are taking over the world and they are stealing his piece of pie.

A man can be misogynistic and not know it or acknowledge it. This is the core reason from which everything else stems. He could be looking to make female friends or could be actually looking for a wife. He would still hate women because he's grown in such an environment and thrives in such an environment.

She could be smarter, she could be less smart, she could be rich, she could be poor, she could be beautiful, she could be less beautiful - if a man is a misogynist, he will always find fault, berate, invalidate, "misunderstand" a woman.

ultblue7 · 2022-02-19T04:16:19+00:00

Lol I had one asshole tell me I “shouldn’t work so hard” and then ghost me after discussing an experiment I was working on during a Friday afternoon. Not someone I was romantically interested in, but Ive also had people in my work environment tell me I needed to get a boyfriend instead of working so hard. I understand I am somewhat of a workaholic but that shit just made me furious. Like a boyfriend was going to open the doors to a healthy lifestyle lmao.

vitryolic · 2022-02-19T03:01:21+00:00

Men try to attract women they consider ‘out of their league’ for ego and clout. When they realise you will never boost their ego, they try to tear you down.

It’s the same ideation as men who want someone super beautiful, but dOeSn’T kNoW iT, i.e. is insecure and easy to manipulate. They want to boast about their intelligent, beautiful girlfriend while doing nothing to earn or keep her.

Men are terrified of women who know their own power. So much of dating with men is nothing to do love or companionship, it’s all about control.

HVM don’t step on others to make themselves seem big, and HVW don’t need to minimise themselves to please others.

pineapplequeeen · 2022-02-19T04:28:32+00:00

Yeah I went back to engineering school and around his friends he would act so proud of me but when we were alone he would intentionally stays fights w me before exams, would question if I could really do it (I have one year left. So yeah I can lol), he would accuse me of sleeping with guys from school? He would say the field of engineering I’m going into isn’t the best and I should do software, etc. he tore me down constantly. When we met I was “just a waitress” but once I went back to school our entire dynamic shifted. He then would shit on me about everything. Men like that are insecure.

RussianAsshole · 2022-02-19T08:07:45+00:00

We need to talk more about how men will undermine you or sabotage you in the workplace. And in large friend groups, etc.

sassenachpants · 2022-02-19T08:20:43+00:00

Tangentially related: I had an ex that was upset that I urinated faster than him. I’m not kidding. If we were at an event and I came out of the bathroom before him he would accuse me of not washing my hands (ew). Then he tried to tell me it was impossible for a woman to pee faster because of physics, math, and urethra length.

Alkhemia · 2022-02-19T03:55:42+00:00

Years ago, I met a man for a date. Before we met, he seemed very interested in my undergraduate degree and he feigned interest in my field of study. When we met up for coffee (this was pre- FDS), he shows up with a stack of obscure books (WTH?! This is a date, not a book report!) that were tangentially related to my undergrad degree. This clown then proceeded to quiz me on obscure facts until I noped out after thirty minutes. 🙄

Bbeautifulbitch · 2022-02-19T02:37:35+00:00

A man found out I went to one of the top 5 universities in the country and said… well you didn’t go to the #1 top school for your subject 😂 he was a construction worker

Salt_Satisfaction · 2022-02-19T04:51:02+00:00

I used to speak to this guy who I got into debates with and he jumped to conclusions like crazy, always to the one that would mean I was not understanding the argument, that I didn't know what I was talking about or that I was simply dumb. At first I was even a bit intimidated and wondered if I really was wrong or not that smart.

Then the fog would disappear and I would be more outraged at how arrogant he was than anything else. Jokes on him because I learned to persist and after not backing down it basically turned out that he was bluffing a lot of his arguments and he was the one who often didn't really know what he was talking about.

If I had met him after FDS I wouldn't have wasted my time like this, but weirdly enough it indirectly gave me more confidence to not doubt myself so easily when faced with criticism.

Diamond_fairy · 2022-02-19T08:43:49+00:00

This comes from my late boss, so not even someone that should feel anything for me or start comparisons. We were on mandatory office lunches every Friday, and I my coworker was asking me about basic biology stuff - difference between viruses and bacteria, and how cells get infected. We're in the legal field, but I'm much more interested in science since I can remember. My boss started shouting "we're lawyers! We do not f**ing give a s*t about cells and science!". Vulgarities included. That's how challenged and ignorant he felt. If someone double my age, with a brilliant career behind him, both lawyer and university professor, can feel this bad about a woman showing knowledge he doesn't have and having fun with it, just imagine every other basic guy.

Ahollowbullet-yet · 2022-02-19T08:53:39+00:00

"Our desire for similarity goes beyond attitudes and beliefs and extends to abilities as well. For example, we may admire extraordinary skill in quarterbacks or saxophone players, but when it comes to friends and lovers, extraordinary people can threaten our self esteem and make us feel a bit nervous about our own competence. This seems to be especially true when the extraordinary person is a woman and the nervous person is a man." -from my Psychology textbook. They cite Ratliff& Oishi (2013) in this part if anyone is interested in the source

pygmymetal · 2022-02-19T03:54:57+00:00

My ex loved football. He was Scottish a fan of American football. I once casually told him that John Madden didn’t like to fly so he took the bus to the train. My ex demanded to know how I knew that and he didn’t. I don’t know it’s just something I heard. That wasn’t sufficient. He accuse me of pretending I didn’t know stuff. Quite bewildering. Should’ve just dumped the guy.

Edit: word

LittleWinn · 2022-02-19T12:24:57+00:00

Yes this happens to me a lot, holding multiple degrees and having an imposing shape has pretty much guaranteed negative male attention.

katiekat0214 · 2022-02-19T02:23:28+00:00

Yeah, as a teacher, this, all the time. All the so-called "jokes" about teachers, all based in insecurity, and not one ever funny, just cringe.

My personal pet peeve is the "Do you work?" question. So cringe to ask IF I work in the 21st century. I've said to men, how odd to be asked if I work, since it's the 21st century. It's far more normal to simply ask someone what they do. And of course it's only men who ask me if I work. Quite often I ask, do you work? have you ever worked? Nine times out of 10 they don't get the condescension at all. Just soooooooo insensitive. BOORS.

More than once I've been shit tested; they'll ask if I've ever read x book, then when I haven't, oh well then, you can't be that educated, that smart, that good of a teacher. Yeah, right, because there are just SO FEW books out there! I missed that one particular one. Spare me.

BoxingChoirgal · 2022-02-19T17:25:05+00:00

OMG YES. This!!
Why do they hate when you are smarter than them, and instantly flip it to make it a flaw of YOURS?

Like, the minute you reveal that you have a profession or education that might mean a higher IQ than theirs, they need to immediately confirm that you can't change a tire or wire up a house generator or something USEFUL . .. to knock you down a peg.

The older you get the worse they can be.

I (f/58) had a "one date wonder" with a guy who visibly , physically, shrank when he learned that I held a Masters Degree from an Ivy League University.

He rolled his eyes and said "I'm just looking for a nice normal woman, maybe with a GED. har-har-har." (So that with his GED gal, perhaps his barely managing to finish high school could be a source of feeling superior, I suppose?)

Another one -- and I cringingly admit with full, frontal shame that I continued to date and pursue a relationship with this guy -- had a hostile reaction when I asked what he was reading lately.

It was a text exchange in the early getting-to-know-you phase and I am shocked looking back now, that I CONTINUED with this guy:

ME: So, read any good books lately?

HIM: Why, is that one of your conditions?

ME: What? No? Um, just wondering what you're reading lately.

HIM: I read about mechanics and non-fiction. I read websites and the paper sometimes.

ME: Okay , cool. was just wondering.

HIM: What is this, a test?

ME: Wow, um, lol , no, just looking for book recommendations, honestly.

HIM: You're killing me.

Guess it doesn't take much for some guys to feel threatened...

t3ddi · 2022-02-19T20:29:24+00:00

Men are very uncomfortable with intelligence, even when its muted for their comfort. Its not about sharing ideas to these men, its about domination over ideas.

mandoa_sky · 2022-02-19T06:05:16+00:00

the OLD i use specifically has a section that mentions school and job. makes it easy to figure out early / who might be illiterate/ identify the swipe on everyone type

akashyaboa · 2022-02-19T19:09:46+00:00

My ex works in a nuclear field, I work in the law field. He didn't like it when he learned that I knew how nuclear reactors work better than him. I just wanted to help him understand as he has just started in his field. And he made it his life mission to fiend a way to belittle me. I was introduced to a friend of his that was working on his physics PhD. My ex asked his friend, in a mocking tone, to tell me about his subject. Well I understood his subject too because I had a group project on that matter in high-school. The look on my ex's face when he was cut out of the conversion was priceless. His friend had a crush on me after that as I learned later.

NotMyRealName814 · 2022-02-19T14:57:46+00:00

I dated a guy who got really mad at me because I scored higher than he did on a simple vocabulary test from a magazine. Things like that are a serious red flag, ladies. It may seem to be trite but if something like that upsets him or if he's mad that you're making better grades in school than he has you need to run far and run fast.

vaporwav3r · 2022-02-19T17:57:21+00:00

I dated a guy who had spent most of his 20s in the military and had just got out a year so although he was stable (job, house, car), he was still trying to figure out what he REALLY wanted to do. He wanted to work in the creative field and I have been in the creative field my entire life. He resented the fact that he had some assumptions about certain things and I would explain to him that it doesn’t work like that. He was once talking about an art project involving seashells and I informed him that if does decide to do it, seashells can be very dangerous if you shave them or crush them, to wear a N99 mask cause there is a deadly lung disease you can catch if you don’t protect yourself with a mask and handling the shells outdoors. Our relationship declined cause I could clearly tell he resented me for my knowledge and progress in the creative industry.

pygmymetal · 2022-02-19T15:35:39+00:00

I wonder if a lot of this behavior is how men mentally rank themselves against their peers. They know no other way to behave so they do it to women. And they see nothing wrong with it cause “everyone” does it.

hashtaggoodvibesonly · 2022-02-19T15:15:53+00:00

I had a guy keep insisting on inserting "oh classic lawyer thing to say", bruh, threatened much??

melympia · 2022-02-19T15:52:45+00:00

Yes, it happens.

Some other things that happen are the following:

Shouldn't you know [obscure random fact related to your field of expertise] if you are a [your expertise]? Or, alternately: Of course you know [obscure random fact related to your field of expertise], you are a [your expertise]. It should be expected.
Let's talk about [his field of expertise] instead...
Hush, don't interrupt...

And some other things.

I remember that long-ago ex boyfriend who knew I started reading books in English a couple of years ago and decided to gift me the sequels to a book I recently read in our native language (German) - "because you don't need them in English".

whiskey_and_oreos · 2022-02-19T02:47:32+00:00

While I was in college: "Are you learning about xyz in your degree program? No? Then your degree is worthless" from my mother's husband. He was so eager to shut me down that he misunderstood my major and xyz wasn't even relevant to my degree but it was the only thing he knew about that was even tangentially related. Oh and he was a truck driver and I have two STEM degrees now. 🤷🏻

fnafcole · 2022-08-26T08:56:56+00:00

im a man tf u gon do about it pussy

Title	Men start looking for reasons to hate/intentionally misunderstand you when they realize you’re smarter than they expected?
Author	xoladybugxo
Upvotes	1165
Comments	111
Date	February 19, 2022 2:10 AM UTC (4 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/FemaleDatingStrategy
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/FemaleDatingStrategy/comments/svyu7l/men_start_looking_for_reasons_to/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/FemaleDatingStrategy/men-start-looking-for-reasons-to-hateintentionally.1102542 https://theredarchive.com/post/1102542

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